Struggle for Establishing Claim over Vested Property
Khagendra Sarker, a villager at Ishan Gopalpur of Faridpur died in 2002. Since then, his wife Lipika Sarker (Age) and her three sons started facing a lot of troubles and harassments particularly in maintenance of the lands owned by the family. But agony started much before when the then Pakistan government promulgated the Enemy Property Ordinance two and half decades ago. In 1969, government land administration forcibly took possession of 1.04 acres of agricultural land along with another property (0.205 acres of land with a two storied building) at Faridpur municipality area belonging to the Sarker family in the name of Enemy property. In 2012 Vested Property Return Tribunal was set up in Faridpur district for settling the claims (in form of written applications) for returning the vested property to its original owner/co-sharer/successor. In the same year, Lipika Sarker and her three sons Ujjal Sarker, Sagar Sarker and Utpal Sarker filed an application (case no 4 of 2012) before the tribunal claiming the property back to them. Tribunal gave a verdict in favour of the family and passed a decree in May 2013 to the government administration for returning the possession of land. Legal provision is that the government administration (deputy commissioner) has to execute the decree within 30 days. But there was no measure from the administration in more than 4 years. At last, 4 July 2017 when the possession of the land finally returned to the family.
The other piece of land (20.5 decimals) was listed in the gazette of Vested Property in 2012. An application (case no 1451 of 2012) was submitted. A two storied building had been built over the land when the government took possession of the land. Tribunal, on 24 September 2013, gave its verdict in favour of the family and passed a decree on 30 September 2013 to the deputy commissioner of Faridpur for returning the possession of the land. Government authority (office of deputy commissioner) made an appeal in the appellate tribunal against this verdict but the appeal was denied and the verdict and decree of the tribunal that was passed in favour of the family was sustained. According to the Vested Property Return Act, the deputy commissioner is bound to implement the decree passed by the tribunal within a month. But the deputy commissioner instead of following the mandatory provision of law, on 1 March 2015 sent a letter to the land ministry and a similar one on 23 April 2015 for instruction. Land ministry, after almost 8 month in a circular dated 28 October 2015, instructed them to follow the provisions of law in lieu of sending letters for instructions from the ministry unless ‘substantial necessity of government’. And law minister opined (signing a note regarding the case on 13 November 2018) that a writ could be filed in the high court division of the supreme court against the denial order of appellate tribunal. Eventually, in spite of clear provisions for returning the properties within one month after the decree passed, till now no measure has been taken from the district administration for executing the decree of 30 September 2013. Hundreds of families in different districts have the same fates, they got a decree from tribunals but are still waiting for its execution.
Following the India-Pakistan war in 1965, the then Pakistan government introduced the Enemy Property (Custody and Registration) Order II in East Pakistan (presently Bangladesh), which was widely criticized as a tool for appropriating the land of the minority population and forcing them to cross the border to India.
In a study (2006), Abul Barkat, Professor of Economics at Dhaka University with his fellow researchers found that some 1.2 million or 44 per cent of the 2.7 million Hindu households were affected by the infamous Enemy Property Act, 1965 and its post-independence version, the Vested Property Act 1974.
ALRD has been among the few Organisations who played a pivotal role in advocacy and lobbying for repealing the discriminatory Vested Property Act and for enactment of a law for returning the vested properties to their deprived owners. ALRD took the first initiative to carry out a study on the impacts of the Vested Property Act. A research team led by Professor Dr. Abul Barkat conducted the study for ALRD in 1993-94. The findings of the study were shared and discussed in different places of the country and the larger civil society groups including human right activists, NGOs, journalists, lawyers involved themselves in the campaign.
Deputations were given to the lawmakers and government authorities at different levels. Meetings, seminars, and other formal and informal awareness building activities were held all over the country. The government formed a parliamentary commission to examine the issues related to the Vested Property Act. The VPA was repealed in 2001 by the new law “Vested Property Return Act 2001”. The victims formally got back their constitutional right through this act. Fifteen years have passed since enactment of the said law. In addition to that, remarkable changes had been made in an amendment of that act in 2011 for its actual implementation. But according to available information, the resolution of the disputes and end of injustice which have been piled up for over 50 years concerning a huge number of victims are yet to be made.
Nonetheless in some districts a good number of victim families have been able to access justice and have got back their ancestral properties or are in the process of getting back their properties which were vested before or after the war of independence in 1971. Also, it is clear from the civil society evidences and media reports that a host of complications have arisen due to noncompliance, corruption and complexities. In Faridpur, the case of Lipika Sarker is one of the examples of how a family faces suffering.
According to the annual report of the land ministry, 118,173 cases have been filed in Vested Property Return Tribunals, out of which 26791 cases were disposed of up to June 2020. With the support of VPRA-NCSCC, recently ALRD collected VPRA information from 21 district tribunals out of 61 districts and found that 63,815 applications (cases) where filed and 25,616 (40.14%) cases have been disposed of and 58.76% appeal applications have been disposed in the Appellate Tribunals. The disposal rate of the cases was only 6.5% in 2016 which increased significantly (more than 40%) due to continued collective efforts of ALRD and VPRA-NCSCC (i.e. advocacy and lobby initiatives at both national and local level) and the directives of the High court which came in through a writ petition supported by ALRD.
However non-compliance of the tribunals’ verdicts and decrees remained one of the key impediments in implementation of the Vested Property Return Act. Earlier, after repealing the `Kha’ schedule of Vested Property in 2013, a total of 742,421.24168 acres of land had been regarded out of the vested property list. ALRD along with its allies is now addressing this issue through a localized and decentralized measure, i.e. engaging the local partners, actors and rights defenders and monitoring the implementation status of the VPR Act at the district level.
