MUHAMMAD ILYAS, J.---This order shall also dispose of Civil Petition for Special Leave to Appeal No.730/L of 1994, Border Area Committee v. Joint Secretary, Ministry of Religious Affairs, etc., Civil Petition for Special Leave to Appeal No.731/L/1994, Lt.-Gen. (Rtd.) K.M. Azhar, etc, v. Abdul Majid and Civil Petition for Special Leave to Appeal No.732/L of 1994, Lt.-Gen. (Rtd.) K.M. Azhar Khan v. Evacuee Trust Property Board, etc.
2. One of the main questions involved in the instant petition as well as in the aforementioned connected petitions, is whether impugned order of remand made by the Joint Secretary, Ministry of Religious Affairs, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, is in accordance with law. In the remand order, the Joint Secretary has required the Chairman, Evacuee Trust Property Board, to determine, under section 8 of the Evacuee Trust Properties (Management and Disposal) Act, 1975, whether some of the property involved in the petitions in hand is or is not evacuee trust property.
3. View taken by the learned Single Judge of the Lahore High Court, in the impugned judgment, is that the Chairman, Evacuee Trust Property, has exclusive jurisdiction to decide question relating to the status of the aforesaid property and, therefore, the order of the Joint Secretary is unexceptionable.
4. It was contended by learned counsel for the petitioner that under subsection (1) of section 8 of the said Act, the Chairman, Evacuee Trust Property Board, has exclusive jurisdiction to decide a question whether an evacuee property is attached to a charitable, religious, educational trust or institution or not; but the petitioner's case is that the property in dispute is owned by the Provincial Government. He maintained that since it was not the plea of the petitioner that the said property was evacuee property, the Chairman, Evacuee Trust Property Board did not come in the picture.
According to learned counsel, he would have had the exclusive jurisdiction to decide the question if the petitioner's contention had been that the property in dispute was an evacuee property. His argument, therefore, was that the view taken by the learned Judge in Chamber was erroneous and called for interference by this Court.
5. Points canvassed by learned counsel need consideration. Leave is, therefore, granted in the instant petition as well as in the other petitions mentioned at the outset, to appeal against the judgment of the learned Single Judge out of which they have arisen.