The Punjab Assembly deserves credit for the thoroughness of its investigation into Lahore Gymkhana. Its Special Committee No. 6 has demanded original lease deeds, government summaries, file notings, valuations, building approvals and audited accounts. Senior officials and club management have been summoned to explain how more than 100 acres of valuable public land came to be leased at a reported annual rent of Rs5,000. The club’s chairman has himself acknowledged that the rent is inadequate.
This is what legislative scrutiny ought to look like. Public land is not a private favour, and no institution should escape questions because its membership is influential. The inquiry must be carried through to a reasoned conclusion, with its findings and the government’s response made public.
There is something encouraging about the determination to reconstruct decisions made decades ago. The Assembly has demonstrated that it can demand records, summon officials and question explanations that might otherwise have gone unchallenged. It would be equally encouraging to see this determination applied to decisions affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions of Punjabis.
Consider wheat, a problem that has followed Punjab through three successive harvests. Government policy has changed repeatedly since 2024, but one experience has remained familiar to growers: the price discussed in government offices is not necessarily the price paid in the mandi.
In 2024, Punjab announced a support price of Rs3,900 per 40 kilograms. Farmers expected the government to enter the market. Instead, it bought no wheat that season. As harvesting progressed, prices in parts of Punjab fell to Rs3,000–3,200. A price announced without a buyer offered little protection to growers who needed to sell to repay loans and meet household expenses.
The following year, Punjab announced no formal minimum support price and again stayed out of direct procurement. In April 2025, wheat changed hands at around Rs2,200–2,390 per maund in reported markets. The government offered financial assistance and alternative financing arrangements, but whether these measures adequately compensated farmers for their losses remains an important question.
In 2026, another approach was attempted. The government announced a Rs3,500 benchmark and introduced procurement through private aggregators. The chief minister promised immediate buying, but implementation was delayed. Early harvest prices again fell to around Rs3,000 before recovering later. By the end of May, reported purchases through aggregators amounted to only about 160,000 tonnes, well short of the revised target of 860,000 tonnes and far below the original three-million-tonne procurement ambition.
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The difficulty was not that prices remained depressed throughout the season. It was that the promised purchasing mechanism struggled to operate when farmers most needed a buyer.
Now the prime minister has announced an indicative price of Rs4,500 for the 2027 harvest, and Punjab’s chief minister has promised to ensure its implementation. A procurement plan and digital portal have also been announced. These commitments are welcome. What remains unclear is who will purchase the wheat, how much will be bought, how the arrangement will be financed and what protection growers will have if market prices fall below the benchmark.
Three harvests, three different approaches, and a fourth season beginning with another promise.
The Punjab Assembly has debated wheat repeatedly and called for investigations. Yet there is still no clearly documented, consolidated parliamentary examination of these successive policy choices and their consequences. The decisions on stock assessments, withdrawal from procurement, farmer support and private aggregators deserve to be examined together. Punjab needs a clear accounting of what each policy cost, what it achieved, and who bore the losses.
This does not mean returning to unlimited government procurement. The old system carried substantial financial costs and needed reform. But precisely because the choices are difficult, the Assembly should insist that they be supported by evidence and that their results be examined.
The uncertainty does not end with wheat. Sugarcane growers face another familiar problem when mills delay crushing. Mature cane remains standing while the wheat-sowing window narrows. In November 2025, Punjab’s Cane Commissioner issued notices to ten sugar mills for failing to begin crushing by the notified date, acknowledging that the delays were also affecting wheat sowing.
The Assembly raised the issue again in October and received assurances about an early start. What became of last year’s notices? Were penalties imposed? A committee examination of crushing dates, payment records and enforcement action would provide answers. A farmer’s agricultural calendar cannot be extended by an administrative assurance.
Then there is the infrastructure upon which much of Punjab’s agriculture depends. The province inherited an enormous canal network built over generations, but siltation, deteriorating structures, inadequate maintenance and unreliable tail-end supplies remain recurring concerns.
The government’s decision in June to substantially increase abiana makes the condition of that network especially relevant. Farmers must now pay Rs1,650 per acre for Kharif and Rs850 for Rabi. The 2026–27 budget estimates irrigation receipts at approximately Rs43.6 billion. Yet only Rs8.9 billion has been allocated under the specific repairs and maintenance head.
The distinction matters. The Irrigation Department, like other government departments, receives separate budget allocations for establishment and administrative expenditure. Abiana is charged to farmers for irrigation services. Its collections should be ring-fenced for maintaining the infrastructure that delivers those services, rather than being absorbed into general revenues without a transparent connection to maintenance.
Punjab’s own Water Policy of 2018 recognised the relationship between abiana and the cost of operating and maintaining the irrigation system. The government has now substantially increased the charges. The question is whether it has made a corresponding commitment to maintaining the network.
Farmers paying higher abiana are entitled to know where their money goes. A transparent, canal-wise account of collections and maintenance expenditure would make that possible. It would also allow the Assembly to establish whether maintenance funds are reaching the canals, distributaries and minors where deterioration is affecting water delivery.
A farmer’s abiana demand is precise and enforceable. The government’s obligation to maintain the infrastructure supplying that farmer deserves equal seriousness. A canal’s maintenance ledger should be no less accessible to legislative scrutiny than a club’s lease deed.
The consequences of incomplete scrutiny are not confined to agriculture. In February, the Assembly’s Standing Committee on School Education questioned the outsourcing of government schools, expressing concerns about enrolment and conditions. Yet another phase involving 6,460 schools was subsequently approved. The policy may well have a sound rationale, but its expansion should be examined against the committee’s earlier findings. The public deserves to know what improvements were achieved, which shortcomings were corrected and what evidence justified taking the programme further.
There is, of course, substantial parliamentary work that deserves recognition. The Public Accounts Committees have examined audit objections in hospitals, education and other departments, directed investigations and demanded recoveries. But an amount ordered recovered is not necessarily money deposited in the treasury. An inquiry initiated is not an inquiry completed.
Punjab’s Assembly Rules already provide for follow-up. Rule 154(5) generally requires departments to report within 45 days on action taken on certain committee findings and recommendations. The Assembly Secretariat should maintain a public register on its website, updated quarterly, showing recommendations, departmental responses, deadlines, reasons for rejection and verified implementation. Citizens would then be able to see not merely what their representatives recommended, but what the government actually did.
No government can be expected to accept every committee recommendation. Sometimes a difficult or unpopular policy is necessary. But explaining a decision, disclosing the evidence behind it and accounting for its consequences are reasonable obligations of public office.
Nor is there any reason to curtail the Gymkhana investigation. It should reach its conclusion, and its findings should be acted upon where warranted.
The recent Gymkhana hearings have shown that the Punjab Assembly can conduct exacting scrutiny. The test now is whether that seriousness becomes routine.
A club’s lease can be investigated decades later. A farmer’s missed irrigation turn, a lost wheat harvest or a child’s school year cannot be recovered so easily.
The people of Punjab deserve the same determination in examining the decisions that shape their lives, and the same insistence on answers when those decisions fail them.