No progress by PA panel on Lahore Gymkhana lease scrutiny

LAHORE: A special committee of the Punjab Assembly tasked with examining the Lahore Gymkhana Club’s lease of state land is yet to submit its report, around 20 months after it was given two months to do so, and has not met since its first and only sitting.

Special Committee No. 6 was set up in September 2024 under the Rule 187 of the Assembly’s rules of procedure after MPA Amjad Ali Javed moved an adjournment motion over the club’s affairs. Headed by MPA Samiullah Khan, the committee was given a nine-point mandate and asked to report to the House within two months.

Under its terms of reference, the committee was to examine the legality of the lease, the club’s compliance with a 2023 rent policy, the construction of unauthorised structures, the financial loss to the exchequer and its recovery, the club’s exclusive use of public land in Bagh-e-Jinnah, and its membership criteria.

The committee held its only meeting on Sept 30, 2024, the first sitting of an Assembly committee to be opened to the public and telecasted live. It directed the Board of Revenue (BoR) senior member to appear in person with the land record and a market valuation, and asked the law department to advise on the legality of the lease and the options available to protect the public interest. The agriculture department, the deputy commissioner and the director general of audit were also asked to attend. The minutes show the next meeting was to be held “in due course”, but no further sitting has taken place.

The committee set up in Sept 2024 has met only once and was given two months to submit its findings

Samiullah Khan tells Dawn that he plans to convene a meeting this week during the assembly session and take the issue to its logical end. However, any decision of the committee, he stresses, would be in the ‘larger public interest’. He did not say why the issue lingered on for 20 months, though the committee had been tasked to settle the matter within two months.

Documents available with Dawn show a wide gap between the value of the land and the rent the club pays. A valuation report prepared by the BoR puts the market value of the commercial land along The Mall, Jail Road and Zafar Ali Road at up to Rs200 million per kanal. For the nearly 1,091 kanals (about 112 acres) in the club’s possession, that places the value of the land at around Rs218 billion.

The club pays Rs5,000 a year in rent under a lease signed in 1996 and valid till 2050. The amount works out to about Rs417 a month, or 38 paisas per kanal per year.

According to the valuation report, the club is also in possession of three kanals and 16 marlas more than the record of rights shows in its name. The committee was further informed that the club holds a 3.5-acre cricket ground inside Bagh-e-Jinnah, owned by the agriculture department, for which no lease exists.

The law department, in its opinion placed before the committee, held that Clause 6 of the 1996 lease allowed the government to terminate the lease at any time on a six-month notice, and that under Clause 8 no compensation was payable to the club for any structure built on the land. The BoR stated that the government was bound to resume the land for a public purpose or on a breach of the lease, and that it had no record of approval for the permanent structures raised by the club.

In its written reply, the club stated that its buildings, including a clubhouse, golf clubhouse, swimming pool, guest blocks, a mosque and a café, had been constructed after the lease. It listed grants received from successive governments but maintained that no public money was being spent on it. It also declined to provide its list of members, calling it confidential. Under the club’s rules, civil servants of grade 18 and above and commissioned officers of the armed forces are entitled to membership against a token fee.

Earlier, the club had refused to share details of its lease and donors sought under the right to information law, arguing before the Lahore High Court that it was not a “public body”. The court dismissed the plea in January 2023, observing that the land was part of the resources of the state and that a rent of Rs5,000 a year “cannot be even termed as any rate whatsoever”.

The arrangement is not confined to Lahore. A policy approved by the caretaker provincial government and notified by the Colonies Department on May 10, 2023 allowed the grant of state land to gymkhana clubs across Punjab at 10 per cent of the market rent. According to the BoR, the rent being charged ranges from Rs20,000 an acre a year at clubs in Mandi Bahauddin and Chiniot to Rs140,000 at Jhelum and Gujranwala city. The board, however, has taken the position that the 2023 policy does not apply to the Lahore Gymkhana as its lease is older.

The issue has resurfaced days after the Indian government ordered the Delhi Gymkhana Club, founded like its Lahore counterpart in 1913, to vacate the 27.3 acres of leased land by June 5 by invoking a clause in its lease for a public purpose.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2026