INTRODUCTION TO

PAKISTAN LEGAL SYSTEM

LAND REFORM

SPRING 2020
 LAND REFORM IN EAST BENGAL
East Bengal Land Acquisition
and Tenancy Act 1950
East Pakistan took the lead in land reforms; the East Bengal Land
Acquisition and Tenancy Act 1950 abolished rent-receiving
interests between tenants cultivating land and the state or
landowners, and fixed the ceiling of self-cultivated land at 33
acres. This weakened the landed class considerably: no member
from East Pakistan was a landlord in the Constituent Assembly
from 1954 to 1956.
LAND REFORMS UNDER AYUB
West Pakistan Land Reforms Regulation 1959

Salient aspects:
• No one individual could own more than 500 acres of
irrigated and 1,000 acres of unirrigated land
• Jagirs to be abolished without compensation.
• Provisions which provided for security of tenants as
well as for preventing the subdivision of land
holdings.

Dissent
Land commission member Ghulam Ishaq Khan (future
president) complained that the land ceiling was too high
and would render such reforms ineffective. He also
argued that landlords should not be allowed to transfer
their additional land to heirs.

Effects
Reforms went largely unimplemented.
LAND REFORMS UNDER BHUTTO
Land Reforms Regulation 1972

Salient aspects:
• No individual holdings were to be in excess of 150
acres of irrigated land or 300 acres of unirrigated
land
• Land in excess of these limits to be taken without
any compensation. The same will be distributed
among tenants.
• Landlords to shoulder the expenses of land
revenue, seed, water charges, etc.

Land Reforms Ordinance 1977

• No individual holdings were to be in excess of 100

acres of irrigated land or 300 acres of unirrigated
land.
• Landowners are to be compensated.
LAND REFORMS: INEFFECTUAL, UNIMPLEMENTED

“By the end of the 1970s Ayub Khan and

Bhutto’s measures had benefited only
.272,000 out of the total 10 million eligible
rural population, and only 4.5 million acres
of cultivated land (less than 10% of the
total) were redistributed. The state, even at
the heights of its power, proved incapable
of reigning in the landed elite. The land
reforms at best clipped their wings, but they
remained the most powerful force in rural
Pakistan.”

S.V.R. Nasr, “Pakistan: State, Agrarian Reform

and Islamization” International Journal of Politics,
Culture and Society 10: 2 (1996)
 BACKGROUND TO QAZALBASH

• A waqf (charitable endowment) near Lahore lost the

majority of its. land after PM Bhutto’s ‘77 Regulation and
approached the Courts.
• The then-Shariat Benches in the High Courts of various
provinces gave conflicting judgments; but the Federal
Shariat Court in Muhammad Ameen v. Islamic Republic
of Pakistan PLD 1981 FSC 23 ruled that land ceilings
were not necessarily un-Islamic.
• The matter ended up with the Shariat Appellate Bench
(SAB) of the Supreme Court.
DEATH BLOW: QAZALBASH JUDGMENT

• In Qazalbash Waqf v. Chief Land Commissioner,

there was a 3-2
. split within the SAB of the SC.
• The composition of the SAB has to be three judges
from the SC, and two from the Federal Shariat Court.
• The FSC judges (Mufti M. Taqi Usmani and Pir Karam
Shah) held land reform or more specifically the
imposition of land ceilings, was un-Islamic; whereas
two SC judges (Nasim Hasan Shah and Shafi-ur-
Rehman) held it was not.
• The tiebreaker was SC judge Afzal Zullah J (who also
headed the bench in the qisas/diyat Gul Hasan case),
ruling that such ceilings were un-Islamic.
 MAJORITY JUDGMENT (TRANS.)
• The right to property in Islam is absolute, and not even
the state can interfere with this right.
• Islam has imposed no quantitative limit (ceiling) on
.
land or any other commodity that can be owned by a
person. Any such limits are prohibited.
• Limits imposed by Islam are in the form of halal and
haram and obligations. But if a property is acquired in a
way that the rights of others are violated…then such a
property acquired through illegitimate means is also
illegitimate.
• The objective of the Islamic welfare system is the
sustenance of the poor. The state’s welfare role is
limited, while a larger amount of responsibility is
placed on the individuals.
~ Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, J
MAJORITY JUDGMENT (TRANS.)
A waqf involves the permanent dedication of
property to Allah. As the property is vested in
Allah, the. state has no right to interfere with that
property, let alone to forcibly acquire it without
compensation.
Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, J
 DISSENTING JUDGMENT
• While absolute ownership of all wealth is that of Allah, man
is only a trustee of whatever he has and is not its absolute
owner and secondly
. that his rights over his property must
be exercised in a way so as to bring about an equilibrium in
social and economic relations.
• It must also not be forgotten that man by nature, as a
general rule is  greedy and selfish. If left to himself he
would not do much for others in the  society…The existence
of hunger and abject poverty in society is entirely on count
of the doings and actions of man. This is clearly recognised
by the Holy Quran.
• From the above discussion it is manifest that in Islam the
full exercise by the owner of his rights in his property has
been appropriately subordinated to his social
responsibility. ~ Nasim Hasan Shah, J
 DISSENTING JUDGMENT
• In a society like Pakistan, which has been raised on feudalistic
capitalistic principles for centuries to reduce the gulf between the rich
and the poor and .restore the social balance it would be essential for
the State to intervene to discharge its responsibilities and amongst its
responsibilities it has to ensure that the society's demand for such
basic requirements as health, education livelihood, and housing are
satisfied.
• Accordingly, in the situation as it presents it-self today in Pakistan
even large scale State intervention to restrain individual greed so that
social welfare is maximized cannot be declared to be against
the injunctions of the Holy Quran. Accordingly, an Islamic State is not
prohibited from adopting such legal measures as contained in Martial
Law Regulation 115 act of 1972 and Act 2 of 1977 in order to bring
about Adl (social equilibrium in the society).
~ Nasim Hasan Shah, J
 DISSENTING JUDGMENT
What the poor must get from the wealth of the rich is not charity
but their haqq (right), of which some one including a particular
social system, may have
. "deprived" them.

…It should not be forgotten that landed property if not equitably

distributed becomes not only the most important source of
economic injustice but also leads social tensions and moral
degeneration in the society.

~ Nasim Hasan Shah, J