Re: GhostBusters
Read how the greedy pakistan army is grabbing land here and there.
Land and the military
By Farhatullah Babar
Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony of a power and seawater desalination plant for the Defence Housing Authority (DHA), Karachi last Friday, General Musharraf wondered why some people criticized the Defence societies in various parts of the country.
Why should one be jealous if someone got a cheap piece of land initially and because of the good work done by the housing society the price rose a hundred times and the land holders earned money, he asked, dismissing his critics as ‘pseudo-intellectuals’.
The general would do well to pause and ponder and ask himself as to why the pseudo-intellectual’s tongues are wagging. They are wagging because the pseudo-intellectuals know how the military first captured political power and then employed this power to advance its corporate interests at the expense of civil society.
A housing society called the Lahore Cantonment Cooperative Housing Society Limited was set up in Lahore under the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act 1925. It was a private society and its operations were carried out on private lands.
As soon as the society began flourishing, the army authorities took forcible possession of the society. On a complaint, the registrar Cooperative Societies ordered that elections be held but the occupiers of the society did not allow elections to be held for 10 years.
In 1999, the military authorities ‘persuaded’ the provincial government to issue an ordinance, the “Defence Housing Authority Lahore Ordinance 1999,” to formalize the take over. The ordinance was promptly challenged in the Lahore High Court on the ground that the provincial legislature cannot legislate on matters relating to defence.
While the matter was still pending in courts the provincial government introduced the ordinance in the form of a bill. It was pending in the assembly when the military took over in October 1999 and the assemblies were dissolved.
Under Article 117(2) of the Constitution a bill pending in a provincial assembly lapses on the dissolution of the assembly. As a consequence, the bill lapsed and the Lahore Cantonment Housing Society was revived. But the army authorities did not allow the members of the society to perform their statutory functions and kept allotting plots to military officers.
Barely three weeks before the general elections of 2002, a presidential order No 26 was issued on September 19, 2002 under which the Defence Housing Authority, Lahore, was set up. This order was subsequently indemnified through the 17th Amendment in the Constitution, thus giving a pseudo-legal basis to the take over of the Society.
If the plots in the DHA Lahore have become an investor’s bonanza it was not due the management of the military authorities but due to the fact that an established private housing society had forcibly been taken over at almost no cost.
Now take the DHA, Karachi. Here too a cooperative housing society formed in 1953 under the Sindh Cooperatives Societies Act 1925. During Zia’s martial law the military the society was abolished and replaced with the Pakistan Defence Officers Housing Authority under presidential Order 7 of 1980.
This order was subsequently indemnified at the time of lifting of martial law, thus again giving a pseudo-legal cover to a forcible take over. The DHA Karachi it is not subordinate to any ministry nor under statutory administrative control.
A few weeks ago in reply to a question in the Senate it transpired that the authority owes Cantonment Board, Clifton, a hefty sum of Rs 280 million accumulated over the past two decades.
It is also worth recalling how the authority it forced the provincial government of Sindh to surrender to it 240 acres of prime land at a dirt cheap price. The provincial government had through law banned the sale of owned by it to other entities.
But the DHA forcibly occupied 240 acres of government land. The provincial government moved the SHC against it claiming that the market price of the land was Rs 15,000 per square yard for residential and Rs 25,000 per square yard for commercial plots.
The provincial government was forced to withdraw its ordinance banning the sale of land, withdraw its petition from the SHC and agree to the sale of 240 acres of land to the DHA at a ridiculously low rate of Rs 20 a square yard.
If the ‘pseudo-intellectuals’ find it hard to accept the claim that the DHA has become an investor’s bonanza because of excellent management, are they to blame?
Or, take the case of military farmlands in Okara and other towns of Punjab. The farmlands belong to the Punjab government and were leased to the military for a specific purpose. The military has neither paid the lease rent to the provincial government nor vacated the land and returned it to the provincial government.
Instead, the military has asked the tenants to renounce their rights of sharecropping and accept its contract system. The military has promised them that they will not be ejected but the tenants refuse to believe this knowing full well how captured state lands have been captured in the past. What fate befell the tenants has been documented by human rights bodies and need not be recounted here.
Or consider what has happened to the lands given to the military for specific defence purposes in the past. Recently it transpired in parliament that the military had transformed six agricultural and dairy farms spread over several hundred acres of land into golf courses and army housing schemes. If an enterprise gets prime land free and develops housing societies on it, this is bound to became an investor’s bonanza.
General Musharraf also said the military was not engaged in any commercial activity. If the Askari stud farms, Askari fish farms, Askari guards, Army Welfare Shoe project, Fauji Corn Complex, Fauji Poly Propylene products, Fauji sugar mills, Army Welfare sugar mills, Fauji Cement, Fauji Kabirwala Power Company, Fauji Corn Complex, Fongas, Fauji Fertilizer Company, Fauji oil terminal company project, Askari leasing, Askari welfare pharmaceutical project, army welfare woollen mill, army welfare hosiery unit, Askari welfare saving scheme and Askari information service do not show the military’s involvement in commercial activity, then what do they indicate?
Isn’t it the same as a political party getting into power and then using state power to advance party interests by making laws to legalize such activity?
*The writer is a member of the Senate. *
***