Grazing land can only be allotted for public use: SC

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Tuesday held that charagah land — an open pasture, a field or meadow used for grazing cattle — is distinct from state land and can only be leased out on specific conditions, and that too with the permission of the Board of Revenue (BoR).

Grazing land is always considered a common resource for the benefit of a village and, if leased out, should be for a public purpose, that too for a specified period of time with the permission of the BoR, observed Justice Ayesha A. Malik in a judgement.

The grazing land cannot be allotted to anyone under the Lambardari grant since the character of such land cannot be changed, observed Justice Malik, who headed a three-judge Supreme Court bench that had taken up petitions against the May 29, 2024, Lahore High Court order whereby the writ petition of Maratab Ali (respondent) had been allowed and the orders of the three revenue forums passed against the respondent were set aside.

The SC judgement recalled how the petitions had challenged the grant of pasture to Maratab Ali on the basis of a 2006 notification issued by the BoR Punjab. Petitioner Muhammad Yousaf had challenged the grant of grazing land to the respondent under the Lambardari grant as being illegal.

Maratab Ali was appointed lambardar of Chak No 23, Tehsil Malikwal in Mandi Bahauddin district in 2001 and was consequently allotted the grazing land measuring 140 kanals and 18 marlas, under the Lambardari grant vide mutation No 1173, Feb 24, 2009.

Justice Malik explained that historically, a charagah land was considered a common land reserved for grazing purpose, for the benefit of the village and not of any individual. She added that it was historically considered as non-cultivable, explicitly used for a collective purpose, as part of the collective rights of the village.

This strip of land is always maintained by the village and is not to be allotted or sold or exchanged, but could be used for public purposes like extension of schools and playgrounds, pits for temporary storage of manure for village tanks and for planting of trees.

Justice Malik said that a charagah was not state land, which is why its usage has to be approved by the BoR. The charagah land has very distinctive features as is evident from the Charagah Policy and the notification of 2001.

Lambardars appointed as village headmen were granted land under specific schemes such as the Pedigree Livestock Breeding Scheme or the Temporary Cultivation Scheme, the judgement said.

By way of the 2006 notification, lambardars could hold the land on lease during this time and no proprietary rights could be granted even for state land. The purpose of the lambardari grant was to give him a stake in the village revenue collection.

Although much has changed over time, the lambardari grant continues even today as a form of compensation provided to lambardars, it said.

The judgement explained that BoR gave a specific advice on July 10, 2022, that a charagah land could not be allotted to anyone under the lambardari grant and the reason for this advice and the cautious guarding of the charagah was that the character of the charagah land could not be changed.

Even this advice was ignored in the impugned order consequent upon which the grant in favour of the respondent was upheld. “We find that the revenue officers rightly cancelled the allotment of charagah land as lambardari grant in favour of the respondent and ordered for its resumption in favour of the State,” the judgement said.

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2025