Ravi project: LHC stays land acquisition

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court Friday stayed the acquisition of agricultural land for the Ravi Riverfront Urban Development Project and directed the registrar office to club all identical petitions and fix them before one bench.

Representing a public interest petition, Advocate Sheraz Zaka argued before the court that acquisition laws had been blatantly violated by the government as farmers were being deprived of their precious land. The counsel said compulsory acquisition would deprive the farmers of their agricultural land and could pose food security threats in future. He pointed out that a vast chunk of agricultural land being converted for the benefit of property developers was against the convention of biological diversity that the government of Pakistan had also ratified.

Justice Ali Baqar Najafi observed that a similar situation had also been witnessed across the border in India, where farmers were protesting against the government for subjecting them to commercial interests. The lawyer said the government had not issued a notification to disclose any public purpose of the project which it was supposed to do under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act 1890.

He pointed out that in all other interconnected petitions the LHC had already stayed work on the project with a direction to the provincial government to appoint an international consultant to prepare the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the project. Justice Naqvi restrained the government from the process of land acquisition till the next date of hearing on March 2 and directed the registrar office to club all interconnected petitions so that it could be fixed before one bench.

Earlier, Justice Shahid Karim had ordered the government to engage an international consultant for the EIA of the project. Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza had also restrained the government from taking a final decision on the EIA being prepared by a local consultant.