Grappling with the land mafia

Commendably for it, the government has finally decided to deal with the menace of land mafia. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told a lawyers' delegation on Monday that the Illegal Disposition Act, 2005, which has already been approved by Parliament, will be implemented soon after the President gives his formal assent. He pointed out that illegal occupation of land and long pendency of related cases are damaging the national economy, adding that the government would grapple with the land grabbers sternly.
This expression of a strong resolve to tackle the problem of illegal land grabbings is the outcome of the frustration that the government has faced in its efforts to invigorate the housing sector. Not too long ago, it may be recalled, the Prime Minister had announced an ambitious plan to energise the housing sector so as to generate economic activity and employment opportunities in the allied industries.
The all-time low interest rates together with easy availability of housing loans, it was hoped, would increase construction activity in the housing sector. That did not happen, as the Prime Minister noted, because of the activities of the land mafia. This mafia has been thriving for over two decades now largely because successive governments chose to act as silent spectators despite repeated public outcries.
Encouraged by governmental apathy, it has been expanding the scope of its illegal operations and openly announcing fictitious housing schemes, to cheat many unsuspecting citizens out of their life savings with the lure of owning a home of their own.
Aggravating the plight of the victims of various land scams are the weaknesses in the legal system that holds possession as nine-tenth of the law, and which is notoriously slow moving. It, in fact, is not uncommon for people to spend more than ten years in litigation in order to claim genuine rights over a house, residential plot or even agricultural land.
In some instances, the litigation has gone on for two generations or more, in utter disregard of the age-old legal adage that justice delayed is justice denied. The situation being what it is, the new law comes as a much welcome relief to countless victims of the land mafia. As the Prime Minister disclosed, its victims would now be able to apply for remedy to a sessions judge who would be responsible for conducting an inquiry within 14 days, and empowered to issue a repossession order.
Even more important is the provision in the new law that binds the sessions judge to decide the case of an illegal occupation within 60 days.
Notably, the government is also in the process of computerising revenue records with a view to eliminate fraudulent land titles that the mafia has been using to sell and resell several times over residential plots to innocent buyers. Once this exercise is completed and the new law to expedite resolution of property disputes is in place, the land mafia, hopefully, will become a thing of the unsavoury past.
And of course, when that happens the government will be able to implement its much-cherished plan to increase construction activity in the housing sector.