1. Land reform in Pakistan
Land reform:
 Re-distribution of land amongst small land owners by
expropriating land from large land owners.
 breaking up large land holdings and thereby changing the
pattern of land ownership to stop the concentration of land in
a selected few hands.

2. Why Land Reform is important
 Society has peculiar social economic and political
consequences.
 Society becomes stratified.
 Manorial system hampers social progress and landless
peasants remain politically weak.
 therefore unable to seek solutions to the problems.
 Concentration of land is deemed as an undesirable to
social and economic equality.

3. Land reforms 1947-49
 The first government review of land reforms was tackled in
the province of Sind in 1947.
 the Government Hari Enquiry Committee declared that:
 The Haris’ problems are of the their own creation or natural problems.
 the landlord is in fact a friend of the Hari and land reform is deemed
undesirable and even a loss for the Hari.
 However, One member of the committee dissented and his
minute of dissent was not published until April, 1949.
 The dissenter, Muhammad Masud wrote that:
 The condition of Haris is deplorable.
 the differences between the landlord and Hari is too unfair.

4.  His recommendations:
 Abolishment of manorial system
 Expropriation of land from landlords.
 And that absolute ownership of land be vested in the State.
 After publishing the notice The Pakistan Muslim League
constituted a five member committee,
 The committee presented its report in June 1949,
 It proposed short term measures include the reduction in
share of owner from share croppers.
 The long term measures proposed included restriction on
large land ownership and expropriation of land that excess
the limit of maximum land holding.

5.  The recommendation on land holdings was 150 acres for
irrigated and 450 acres for un-irrigated land.
 The committee was undecided on the issue of land
redistribution.
 The proposed short term measure was implemented in
Sind, Punjab and NWFP between 1950 and 1952.
 But nothing was done to help the farmers of Baluchistan and
the princely states (Bahawalpur, Khairpur, etc.).

6. Ayub Khan’s reforms 1959
Recommendations included:-
 A ceiling of 500 acres for irrigated and 1000 acres for un-
irrigated land.
 Land was to be redistributed amongst to tenants already
cultivating the land.
 Permanent proprietary rights to occupancy tenants.
 Idea of “subsistence holdings” of no less than 50 acres was
proposed.
 However, Ghulam Ishaq Khan was dissented with the
majority opinion on the land ceiling.
 He proposed the ceiling of 150 and 450 acres of irrigated/un-
irrigated land for individuals and 300/900 acres limit for
families (irrigated/un-irrigated).

7. Effect of 1959 reforms
 The recommendations were put into force through the Martial Law
Regulation No. 64 on February 7, 1959.
 2.5 million acres of land was resumed,.
 2.3 million of it distributed amongst 183,271 tenants and small owners.
 The resumed land was around of 4.5 % of the total cultivable land in
Pakistan.
 just 0.65 million acres was distributed amongst the farmers who had
holdings below subsistence level (12.5 acres).
 The government overtook only 35% of the holdings.
 In 1947, Less than 1% of farm owners control more than 25% of
agricultural land.
 After the 1959 reforms, less than 8.5% of farm owners control more than
42% of agricultural land.
 However, average holding per landlord was still 7,208 acres in Pakistan
and 11,810 acres in Punjab due to the state’s inefficiency.

8. ZAB and Land Reforms
 He promulgated on March 1, 1972, Martial Law Regulation No.
115 of 1972, often called Land Reforms Regulation 1972.
 The ceiling on land holdings was lowered to 150 and 300 acres for
irrigated and un-irrigated land respectively.
 The reforms failed to produce the expected results.
 A second wave of reforms were introduced through the Land
Reforms Ordinance, 1977.
 Ceiling on land holdings was reduced to 100 acres for irrigated land
and 200 acres for un-irrigated land.

9. Effect of the 1972 and 1977 reforms
Under the 1972 reform:
 1.3 million acres of land was resumed.
 0.9 million of that was distributed amongst 76,000 beneficiaries.
Under the 1977 reform:
 another 1.8 million acres of land was resumed.
 0.9 million acres was distributed amongst 13,143 beneficiaries.
 By the end of the Ayub Khan and Bhutto’s measures had benefited
only 272,000 out of the total 10 million eligible rural population.
 Only 4.5 million acres of cultivated land (less than 10% of the total)
were redistributed.

10. Legal Problems and fate of Land Reforms
 On 5 July 1977, Zia ul Haq overthrew the government of Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto.
 He brought with him the notion of Islamization.
 He created the Federal Shariat Court (FSC) for the first time.
 Aim being to review whether a law is repugnant to the injunctions
of Islam.
 FSC created Shariat Benches in the High Courts and Supreme
Court.
 Qazalbash Waqf it claimed that its possession of hundreds of acres
of land was merely to serve humanity.
 In total, 67 Shariat petitions were filed in various courts challenging
the land reform legislations.

11.  The majority judgment held that fixing a ceiling on land
holdings was not adverse to Islamic law.
 But the Peshawar High Court declared the ceiling on land
holdings as un-Islamic.
 After 12 years in 1989 the Appeals were filed and final
decision was delivered to judgment of the “Shariat
Appellate Bench” of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
 The judgment was split 3-2 in favour of declaring the
various questions raised on land reforms as un-Islamic.
 The two ulema judges had opinion that land reform was un-
Islamic.
 Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani arguing that the land
reform legislation was repugnant to the injunctions of
Islam, he states:-

12.  Individual property rights in Islam are the same as rights over
other categories like goods.
 Islam has imposed no quantitative limit (ceiling) on land or any
other commodity that can be owned by a person.
 If the state imposes a permanent limit on the amount of land
which can be owned by its citizen, then such an imposition of
limit is completely prohibited by the Shariah.
 The order to spend surplus on the poor is not a mandatory order
which can be normally enforced by the state.
 The objective of the Islamic welfare system is the sustenance of
the poor. The state’s welfare role is limited.
 The dissenters on the bench, based their opinion on the concept
of social welfare and equality in the Islamic state.