land reforms of pakistan

1. DR. ARIFA SAEED
Land Reforms in
Pakistan

2. SEQUENCE
 Land Reforms (LRs) in Pakistan – Introduction
 Objectives of Land Reforms
 Evolution of Land Commissions
 Creation of Federal Land Commission (FLC)
 FLC - Organogram
 Functions of FLC
 Management and Governing System of LRs
 Allotment of Resumed Land to Tenants
 Land Reforms Pending Cases with LRs Authorities/HCs
 Amendment in LRs Act, 1977
 Issues / Recommendations
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3. Land Reforms in Pakistan - Introduction
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4. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
 Historically land reforms have been carried out at the initial stages of the
development process when agriculture is contributing more than half of the GDP
of a country as it used to do in Pakistan uptill 1960s.
 Now it contributes around 20 percent of the GDP and is not a dominant source
of wealth notwithstanding its overall economic importance.
 India did carry out, albeit at a limited scale, land reforms in its part of Punjab
primarily to accommodate the Sikh migrants from Pakistan in the wake of
partition.
 Time to do so in Pakistan was in the 1950s and 1960s when it started its
planned development and land reforms could have been made a part of the
overall planning process to carry out the needed socioeconomic restructuring of
Pakistan.
However we missed the bus due to nature of political economy of the country.
The technological imperatives now demand quite the opposite.
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5. WHY NOT LAND REFORMS?-
 Pakistan needs to push its technological frontier in the agriculture sector
for enhancing the productivity of its agriculture sector not only to ensure
food security on the one hand and increasing the pace of its
industrial sector.
 Both need an efficient, productive and profitable agriculture sector
whose growth is sustainable and outputs are competitive.
 This is possible only and only if we increase the pace of farm
mechanisation and technological innovation in all the agricultural
operations. In order to introduce technology at commercial scale the
size of the farms is the basic condition.
 If we redistribute lands and each farmer gets a parcel of land on which a
tractor is not even economical, how we can increase our productivity?
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6.  Land reforms for the sake of land reforms or social justice are not a
practical public policy option.
 we cannot redistribute private lands, confiscated or purchased, to
landless farmers on moral grounds or as a sound economic policy.
 On what grounds you can confiscate the personal property of someone?
If accepted on the grounds of social justice, then it should also apply to
all sectors of the society without discrimination.
 Dare you touch the property tycoons, the industrial magnates, the
commercial Mafiosi?
 Purchasing land from the big landlords as suggested by some learned
authors at market price and then redistributing it to the landless farmers
is a nonstarter, not possible to carry out by a financially bankrupt state
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7. COMPONENTS OF AGRARIAN REFORMS
1) Formulation of comprehensive Land Use Policy
2) Improving Agricultural Terms of Trade
3) Improving Rural Infrastructure
4) Improving Rural Governance
5) Environmental Sustainability
6) Creating Linkages and promoting Investment
7) Gender Mainstreaming
8) Production Relations-triple Cs (command, control and check outs)
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8. 1-FORMULATION OF LAND USE POLICY
 Developing a national land use policy for rational use of land resources
is the need of the day as valuable arable land is being converted at
alarming rates by the property developers and industrial concerns
for commercial non farm uses
 Infrastructural development, though necessary is also rendering fertile
land to brick and mortar
 Add to it the declining fertility of our agricultural lands due to non
sustainable agricultural practices
 Plus the degradation of our lands due to water logging and salinity
going on for decades, a negative side effect of our irrigation practices
 All these issues needed to be addressed by formulating a long term
comprehensive land use policy by the government
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9. 2-AGRICULTURAL TERMS OF TRADE
 Agricultural transformation demands restructuring, not merely fine
tuning, the political economy of the rural areas which are an integral
subset of the overall economic structure of Pakistan.
 One of the ways to do so is to improve the terms of trade between
agriculture and the other sectors of the economy so that the squeezing
of the peasants can be reversed.
 For this purpose we have to rationalize the prices of the inputs farmers
use as well as those of commodities they produce, ensuring that the
farmers get fair returns for their efforts.
 Improving the marketing infrastructure, provision of subsidy on inputs
and selective procurement when the prices of agricultural commodities
crash as well as the introduction of crop insurance scheme are other
ways of improving the terms of trade
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10. 3-IMPROVING RURAL INFRASTRUCTURE
 Urban areas do need good public goods and services but so do
the rural areas.Visit any village in a developing country and see
the deplorable conditions of roads, schools, hospitals and other
rural infrastructure
 No doubt the government has invested a lot in farm to markets
roads, construction of health facilities, schools and also rural
electrification
 However there are complaints of substandard workmanship
and their fast wear and tear due to paucity of maintenance
funds
 Similarly there are complaints of shortage of staff to man these
health and educational schools. 'Ghost Schools’ was a term
not invented in the air; it has a solid evidence
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11. 4-ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
 There is an urgent need to take adaptive and mitigating
measures to ensure sustainability of the agriculture
sector in the face of looming threat of climate change
 Promoting environment friendly good agricultural
practices through creating awareness and promulgating
legal/regulatory framework with adequate incentives and
rewards are also needed
 Similarly adjusting the cropping pattern and fine-tuning
the planting and harvesting schedules, practicing crop
rotation and diversifying crop mix, developing more
varieties responsive to climate change, and adapting
irrigation practices and fertilization regimes.
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12. 5-IMPROVING RURAL GOVERNANCE
 It is not an easy task to dismantle centuries old rural governance
structure and replace it with modern, formal contract based rural
public management in a short period but can be done in long
term
 Start with education, literacy and skill formation which will shake
the foundations of this feudalistic structure
 Establish alternate dispute resolution mechanism to replace the
informal system heavily dependent on big landlords, supported by
the police and the patwari
 Local bodies elections be held as per fixed schedule which will
bring in the leadership interested in improving rural infrastructure,
the best guarantee of their fast journey to urban culture
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13. 6-IMPROVING RURAL NON-FARM SECTOR
 Sustained growth of the rural economy lies in the development
of efficient and effective agri-based supply chains that link the
agriculture sector with their corresponding upstream and
downstream links in the rural nonfarm(RNF) to the national
and international markets
 RNF provides 40-60% of incomes/jobs in rural areas, much of
its activity occurs in the trading, services and processing
sector having strong forward and backward linkages with
agriculture.
 Informal and low capital using entities catering mostly to
domestic markets, RNF presents opportunities for providing
value addition to primary production at the farm level
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14.  RNF is hampered by the numerous middle level low capital using
players who add little or no value to products and services
 For creating linkages between non-farm rural enterprises with
agri-based supply chains, we have to establish modern
agricultural produce wholesale markets in public-private
partnership with cold storages, pack houses, customs facilities
etc.
 At the same time government should Introduce warehouse
receipt system for easy realization of sale proceeds to farmers
and encourage processing and value addition of agricultural
produce to fetch better value, and to reduce post-harvest losses
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15. 7-PROMOTING INVESTMENT
 We need to enhance the productivity of the agriculture at micro
and macro level by increasing efficiency in all agricultural
operations through public as well as private sector investment in
R&D, extension services, rural infrastructure, marketing, value
addition etc.
 We need to make agricultural produce competitive in the rapidly
globalizing world by reducing cost of production, improving its
quality and meeting global food safety standards. raising the
awareness of the opinion leaders and decision makers to enforce
strict food safety standards.
 Motivating domestic and foreign investors to invest in seed
production, fruit and vegetable processing, agri-infrastructure
development and encouraging development of commercially
viable non-farm rural agriculture enterprises
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16. 8-GENDER MAINSTREAMING
 Rural women are under three pressures-nature, society and family, all treat them
unfairly in terms of status, ownership of resources , job opportunities and
empowerment
 Improving healthcare and family planning facilities to relieve them of excessive
child bearing burden should be the top priority
 Launching of special rural female literacy and education campaign by offering
attractive monetary rewards would help in their empowerment and reduce
domestic violence
 Ensuring women’s access to resources and assets, including ownership of land
by creating awareness about their rights and strict enforcement of legal
framework priority
 Providing equitable opportunities to women by developing marketing oriented
skills and remunerative employment in the rural areas;
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17. 9-PRODUCTION RELATIONS
 Although it is not possible to replace the centuries old production
relations of land cultivation in the rural areas of Pakistan in the short
term, efforts can be made to introduce the three modern forms of
farming
Contract farming-encouraging agri-based processors to supply inputs &
technology packages to farmers on deferred payment with buy-back of
produce at guaranteed prices
Cooperative farming-piloting variations of successful coop-models (with
refinements to traditional coops)
Corporate farming-promoting lease of commercially viable tracts of land
to corporate level entrepreneurs who are willing to practice high-tech
export oriented agriculture and share profits with the owners
 However all the above three need comprehensive legislation about
contract making/dispute resolution as well as their strict implementation
through a specially created institutional infrastructure
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18. LAND REFORMS IN PAKISTAN –
(LAW, CEILING, COMPENSATION)
Year Law Ceiling On Individual Land
Holding
Compensation
1959 MLR-64
(Repealed under
MLR-115)
500 acres of irrigated land
or 1000 acres of un-irrigated
land or 36000 Produce
Index Units (PIUs).
Compensation
was paid to the
landowners @
Rs.5/- Per PIU(Land
Reforms in Pakistan ).
1972 MLR-115
(Protected under the
Constitution)
150 acres irrigated or 300
acres of un-irrigated land or
12000 Produce Index Units.
No compensation.
1977 Act-II of 1977 100 acres irrigated or 200
acres of un-irrigated land or
8000 Produce Index Units.
Compensation
was paid to
landowners @
Rs.30/- per PIU.
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Note: The PIUs per acre are being determined according to assessment circle & classification of soil of the land i.e.
Nehri, Nul, Chahi, Barani etc.MLR= marshal law regulatiom

19. Land Reforms - Objectives
o To break-up the imbalanced concentration of
landed wealth in few hands
o To uplift the peasant class, protect their
rights and reduce income disparities
o Increase agriculture production
o Reduce unemployment
o Ensure an effective and progressive
relationship between owners and tenants.
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20. Evolution of Land Commissions
• Ayub Khan’s era - West Pakistan Land Commission
under MLR-64 – Governor of West Pakistan as its
ex-officio Chairman and not more than five
members
• Z.A Bhutto’s Regime: Provincial Land Commissions
under MLR-115 – Chief Minister as Chairman and
not more than three members to be appointed by the
respective C.M
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21. Creation of Federal Land Commission (FLC)
• FLC – created under Land Reforms (Amendment)
Act, 1973 by inserting paragraph 4A in MLR-115/72
• Law provides for FLC one Chairman and not more
than 3 Members
• A Federal Minister shall be its Chairman
• Members are appointed by Fed. Govt.
• FLC a judicial body with equal powers vide
notification dated 23.9.1978
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22. ORGANIZATIONAL CHART OF FLC
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Admin. Officer
Chairman
Member-I
Sr. Member
Member-II
Secretary
Registrar Assistant Legal
Advisor
Finance &
Accounts Officer
Accountant
Provincial Inspection Teams
Inspection
Officers/Readers
Chief Commissioner

23.  Coordinate the functioning of Provincial Land
Commissions
 Assist the Federal Government in deciding any
dispute or difference between two or more
Provincial Land Commissions
 Assist the Federal Government in the exercise of
its powers under the law to take cognizance of
land reforms cases and
 (Additional Function) To Supervise distribution
of state and enemy lands owned by the
Provincial Governments
Functions of FLC
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24. 24
Management and Governing System
Provincial Land Commissions:
Chairman Chief Minister
Chief Land Commissioner Senior Member
Board of Revenue
Land Commissioner Commissioner
Deputy Land Commissioner Addl. Distt. Collector
Assistant Land Commissioner Assistant Commissioner

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Federal Land Commission:
i) Chairman/Federal Minister
ii) Senior Member
iii) Member – II Govt. Servants
v) Member – III
Federal Land Commission is the Final Revisionary
Authority under MLR-115/1972 and Land
Reforms Act, 1977 having vast jurisdiction in LRs
cases
Management and Governing System

26. Allotment of Resumed Land
under Land Reforms
to
Tenants/Landless
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27.  Resumed land – Excess land of the prescribed limits
and surrendered to state by the affected landowners
under MLR-64, MLR-115 and Land Reforms Act,
1977 (Act-II/77)
 Resumed land is granted free of cost to the tenants,
small landowners or landless according to the
provisions of above referred Land Reforms Laws.
Allotment of Resumed Land under LRs
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28. OVERVIEW OF RESUMED LAND
Province No of
Declarants
Area
Resumed
Area
Allotted
No. of
Allottees
Area
Under
Litigation
Un-
allotable
Area
Balance
available
for
allotment
Punjab 2961 16,65,521 14,65,386 1,36,609 74,402 24,556 1,01,177
Sindh 1810 11,32,340 10,77,392 60,724 17,393 35,536 2019
Baluchistan 272 5,55,655 3,58,254 16,535 45,195 343 1,51,863
KPK 480 4,11,051 3,26,482 43,600 47,156 21,870 15,543
Total 5523 37,64,567 32,27,514 2,57,468 1,84,146 82,305 2,70,602
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(In acres)
Source: Federal Land Commission

29. Pending Land Reforms Cases with
Provincial Land Reforms Authorities
and
Higher Courts
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30. Pending Land Reforms Cases with Land
Reforms Authorities
Authority Punjab Sindh KPK Balochistan Total
Federal Land
Commission
47 03 15 00 65
Chief Land
Commissioner
231 11 04 00 246
Land
Commissioner
175 17 02 00 194
Deputy Land
Commissioner
86 31 06 02 125
Total 539 62 27 02 630
(565)
Source: Federal/Provincial Land Commissions
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31. PENDING CASES WITH HIGHER COURTS
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Sr. No. Authority No. of cases
1. Supreme Court of Pakistan 206
2. Lahore High Court 467
3. Sindh High Court 55
4. Peshawar High Court 110
5. Balochistan High Court 01
6. Islamabad High Court 15
Total 964
Source: Federal/Provincial Land Commissions

32. Amendment in Land Reforms
ACT-II/1977
in The Light of
The Judgment of Shariat Appellate
Bench
of Honorable
Supreme Court of Pakistan
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33. Extract of Supreme Court Judgments
Dated 10.8.89 and 14.12.1991
 Religious Waqf/Trust land cannot be resumed
 Inherited land cannot be resumed
 Resumption cannot be made retrospectively
 Compensation of resumed at market rates
 Pipeline cases in which action taken prior to 23.3.1990
are protected
 Article 253 of the Constitution is not repugnant
Source: PLD 1990 SC 99 33

34. Amendment proposed in terms of Article 203D(3)(a) of
the Constitution:
 Confirm limit on individual holdings – LRA, 1977
 Exempt land acquired through inheritance
 Exempt lands of Religious Trust or Islamic Waqf
 Payment of compensation of resumed land at market
rates
 Utilize the resumed land for public purposes subject
to the approval of Federal Government
Proposed Land Reforms (Amendment) Bill
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35.  Summary before Federal Cabinet on 5.1.2005
 Cabinet sent it to Law Minister
 Consultation with stakeholders be undertaken
 Minister then sent it to FLC for implementation
 FLC held meetings with PLCs accordingly
 FLC redrafted the proposed amendment
 Presently matter lies with Law Division
Proposed Land Reforms (Amendment) Bill
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36.  Position of Chairman FLC is political – law be
amended
 Appointment of Members is not on regular basis –
be regularized
 Shortage of revenue & IT trained staff – may be
provided
 No Wide Area Networking (WAN) – quick access of
data – be arranged through IT Department
Issues and Recommendations
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 Retrenchment of FLC Inspection Teams defeated
the field work – Enhancement of trained staff
 Non-cooperative attitude of Provincial Land
Commissions – improved coordination needed
 Repeated shuffling of FLC from one Ministry
to the other – FLC may be declared a subject
of Cabinet Division permanently
Issues and Recommendations

38.  Delay in the proposed Amendment Bill – Qazalbash
Waqf case – It may be finalized and presented before
the Parliament
 Payable compensation amount of Rs.37,445,633/- to
landlords
 Quick disposal of balance resumed land to the tenants /
landless
 Quick disposal of pending LR cases with LRAs &
Higher Courts
 Audit of Compensation of Rs. 94,073,266 paid to
landlords
Issues and Recommendations
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40.  Sheikh Muhammad Rashid (PPP)
 Ghulam Ishaque Khan (former president)
 Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi (former PM)
 Rao Muhammad Hashim Khan (PPP)
 Muhammad Issa Abbasi (PPP)
 Ch. Asad-ur-Rehman (PML-N)
 Pir Syed Abdul Qadir Shah Jeelani (PPP)
 Mian Muhammad Zaman (PML-Q)
 Imtiaz Ahmed Sahibzada (former bureaucrat)
 Lt. Gen. (R) Inayat Ollah Khan Niazi (Ex-Army)
 Pir Syed Fazal Ali Shah Jeelani (PPP)
Chairmen FLC – Since 1973
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