EXERCISE OF MEDIATION IN LAND ACQUISITION: AN(OTHER) PARADIGM?

This article examines the growing recourse to court-annexed mediation in disputes arising out of compulsory land acquisition by the State, using as its principal case study the order dated 12.01.2026 of the Lahore High Court, Rawalpindi Bench, in W.P. No.4128/2025, Mst. Ghazala Hussain and others v. Federation of Pakistan and others. The order records the amicable resolution, through mediation, of a decades-old dispute concerning acquisition of the Ojhri Camp land by the Military Authorities. Proceeding from this order, the article situates the exercise of mediation in eminent-domain disputes within Pakistan's broader Alternative Dispute Resolution architecture, interrogates whether such exercise constitutes a genuine doctrinal departure from the classical adversarial model of compensation-fixing under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, and evaluates the promise and perils of importing party-autonomy-based dispute resolution into a field historically defined by the asymmetry between sovereign power and the citizen. The article concludes that mediation in this context is less a wholly new paradigm than an adaptive procedural graft onto an existing statutory scheme one that is doctrinally sound but administratively and structurally delicate, and which merits closer normative scrutiny before its wider replication in acquisition disputes.