Islamabad, June 18 (AHN) Amid widespread criticism from Christian leaders, rights advocates, heritage conservationists and alumni, Pakistan’s Punjab province government has stepped back from plans to demolish a century-old university hostel at the centre of a dispute over ownership, heritage protection and minority rights, a report has highlighted.

The controversy involves Ewing Hall, a historic building dating back to 1916 and located in Lahore’s Anarkali area. Named after James Caruthers Rhea Ewing, a prominent principal who helped shape Forman Christian College University (FCCU) in Lahore, the structure has long been used as a student hostel for the Christian institution founded in 1864 by the Presbyterian Church USA and widely considered one of Pakistan’s leading higher education institutions, Christian Daily reported.

In a social media post on June 11, FCCU Rector Jonathan Addleton said that the Punjab provincial government had "forcibly taken over" the building.

“Very sadly, I must report that the provincial government today forcibly requisitioned Forman's historic Ewing Hall situated in Anarkali near Neela Gumbat and the Old City, evicting FCCU security staff and residents and verbally announcing that FCCU has ‘24 hours’ to remove all movable items, including generators; furniture; historical artefacts, including pictures; and other items, after which they will revert to the government,” Addleton stated.

“While we will look for legal remedies, this decision seems incomprehensible, especially because the March 2026 engineering report that we had commissioned and paid for indicated that the building is structurally sound (we had earlier vacated Ewing Hall as a hostel because of these concerns out of an abundance of caution for the safety and welfare of our students, and we are now seemingly being penalised for it); based on the engineering report, we had also made the decision to renovate the structure and return it for use as a hostel," he added.

Reverend Reuben Qamar, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan (PCP) and the pastor in charge of the FCCU Presbyterian Church, has criticised the Punjab government’s “hostile takeover” of Ewing Hall.

“I strongly condemn the forcible takeover of Ewing Hall by the Punjab government, a historic hostel and an integral part of Forman Christian College since 1916. For more than a century, Ewing Hostel has provided thousands of students with a home that has nurtured academic excellence,” he wrote on X.

According to the Christian Daily report, following the growing criticism, the Lahore Heritage Areas Revival Board (LHAR) clarified in a June 14 statement that Ewing Hall would not be demolished after the provincial government’s repossession of the property, adding that the structure would instead be preserved and restored.

The controversy has also brought renewed focus on the status of church-owned educational institutions that were nationalised during the 1970s in Pakistan.