Land acquisition: Landowners should get market price, orders SC

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has held that landowners must get the fair value of the land acquisition, stressing proper legislation and methodology to calculate potential value and market value, so that it is neither arbitrary nor left to the whims of the collector.

A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial and comprising Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Ayesha A Malik, had dismissed appeals of the Federation of Pakistan and Military Estate Officer against the judgment of Lahore High Court (LHC), Rawalpindi Bench, of March 24, 2022.

The court on Saturday issued a written order in the matter.

“Where the State opts to acquire land, for a public purpose, then the Constitutional protection to property rights must be meaningful because the compulsory acquisition of land means the loss of economically productive property,” says the judgment authored by Justice Ayesha A Malik.

The basic facts are that land measuring 29,199 Kanals 18 Marlas was acquired from three villages in District Attock such that land measuring 27,510 Kanals 13 Marlas from Burhan, 1,630 Kanals 2 Marlas from Jallo and 37 Kanal 12 Marla from Islamgarh for the purposes of the extension of Pakistan Ordnance Factory (POF) I.

“Accordingly, we find that the fundamental error in these cases is that even though three villages have been acquired, the assessment for compensation made by the Land Acquisition Collector and Referee Court was on the basis of agricultural classification of land, ignoring the potential value of the entire area being acquired,” the judgment reads.

The court says that it was evident before it in the cases where the land was initially valued based on its land classification and land revenue requirements without actually granting the landowners the market value and potential value of their land.

The court notes that in the present cases, an entire lifetime has been spent in challenging the compensation awarded, which was not determined in the context of Section 23 of the Act.

The landowners disputed the compensation awarded in 1992, which was based on the nature of the land being Chahi Aabi Selab (irrigated from well/flood water), Maira Rakkar Lass (sandy), Banjar Qadeem and Ghair Mumkin (uncultivated land).

The court says that ideally, there should be guidelines to calculate this value; however, since the efforts of the government have been to undervalue the land, no real effort has gone into devising a scheme to calculate potential value over the years.

“Under the circumstances, there is a dire need to legislate on the issue and to devise a methodology to calculate potential value and market value so that it is neither arbitrary nor left to the whims of the Collector,” says the judgment.