LHC sets aside land acquisition by LDA

LAHORE
The Lahore High Court Justice Ibadur Rehman Lodhi on Friday set aside acquisition of land of five co-operative housing societies by Lahore Development Authority for its own housing scheme ‘LDA Avenue—I’.
The LHC passed the order on petitions of housing societies challenging the acquisition of their land by LDA under ‘The Land Acquisition Act 1894. In December 2001, the LDA had launched Avenue-I Housing Society and acquired over 14,458 Kanal of Chiniot Co-operative Housing Society, 328 Kanal of Islamic Research Scholars Cooperative Housing Society Limited, 320 Kanal of Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (EME) Cooperative Housing Society Limited, 182 Kanal of Punjab Board of Revenue Employees Co-operative Housing Society Limited and 300 Kanal of Punjab Civil Secretariat Employees Cooperative Housing Society.
The petitioners said that co-operative societies were registered and they acquired or entered into an agreement to acquire the landed property, mainly for the purposes of accommodating their respective members.
They further stated the land, which was already earmarked for a specific purpose would not again be acquired in the garb of “public purpose” by providing the same facility of residential plots to the contributors for LDA Avenue-I Scheme.
Further, they said the notification issued under Section 17(4) read with Section 6 of the Act, was defective in nature and it did not qualify to be a valid notification under the land acquisitioning laws.
However, the LDA’s counsel opposed the contentions of the petitioners arguing that the schemes prepared, announced and undertaken by the petitioners were not validly sanctioned schemes by the LDA.
The counsel argued that LDA would have a preferential right to be considered on a better footing than that of the petitioners societies to acquire the land for the purposes of establishing a housing scheme.