July 2021

Following the Supreme Court of Pakistan's decision to overturn Qazalbash Waqf v Chief Land Commissioner, removing the constitutional ban on land reform, the Khan administration indicated that they would be investigating new policy options opened up by the landmark case. While the government has been suspiciously quiet on the specifics of what their proposed land reform policies would look like, they have been very vocal about the fact that they intend to do land reform. Most suspect that PTI is hoping to hold the issue in their back pocket until elections in 2023.

Even though the federal government has been tight-lipped about their future land reform plans, they have started to take steps to make those future plans easier. Presently, there is no centralized land registry in Pakistan, meaning that trying to find out who actually owns what land in most of the country is nothing short of nightmarish. In many rural areas, it requires referring to physical documents and deeds that are decades, sometimes centuries, old. These documents are generally housed at the Tehsil-level, or, Allah forbid, the union/village council-level, meaning that interested parties have to hoof it out to the middle of nowhere to review ancient documents that might not even clearly delineate who owns what due to damage to the records or poor surveying techniques. This is nothing short of a nightmare scenario for the government.

Fortunately, some of Pakistan's provinces have already taken steps to improve the situation. The two largest provinces by population, Punjab and Sindh, have already set up province-level land registries, where interested parties can search through property records without having to travel out to the locality or pay a fee to a local village accountant. These land registries have helped to make Sindh and Punjab the two most attractive destinations for foreign investment--something which the federal government hopes to emulate in the economically underdeveloped provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

With this in mind, the PTI coalition government under Imran Khan has passed a new law, the Pakistan Land Registry Act. Under this law, all provinces of Pakistan, including Islamabad, but not Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, have been directed to collect all existing land records stored at the local level into a digitized database at the province-level. These digital databases will be fully searchable, linking every parcel of land in Pakistan to a Computerized National Identity Card, a corporate entity, or to the federal government itself. Once all of these documents are digitized, they will then be mapped onto a publicly-available and searchable map using GIS.

To ensure that these services are available to all Pakistanis, not just the rich, the new law also includes funding to increase access to land registry services in rural areas. The law mandates the opening of satellite land registry stations across every province in Pakistan, where trained government clerks will provide assistance navigating the registry and its accompanying documents (such as title transfer documents for land sales) to individuals and businesses alike. To help provide service to even the most remote parts of Pakistan, the law also provides funding for over one hundred "mobile" land registry stations, which will travel to Pakistan's most remote communities to provide land registry services through mobile networks or, in the most remote locations, satellite internet.

By attaching an owner to every parcel of land in Pakistan, the government is hoping to make the investment environment of the country more favorable. While the agricultural sector is expected to see an increase in foreign investment following the creation of these registries, the real winner will be the mining sector, as the registry system should ease the process of buying property in the mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, where most of Pakistan's mineral wealth is located.