Punjabi bureaucrats involved with the colony schemes became grantees as well. After the Lower Bari doab colony came up in Montgomery district, a senior British officer observed: Barring the Colonisation Officer himself, there does not appear to have been a single [government servant] connected with the Montgomery Colony who had not obtained a grant.22 The Raj’s answer to the scheme’s abuse was the Colonisation Bill of 1906, which empowered the provincial government to enforce its conditions of tenure in colony lands by summary or executive process, i.e. without initiating proceedings in
...more

