60,000 acres of government land in Karachi under illegal occupation: meeting told

Some 60,000 acres of government land in Karachi has illegally been occupied by some provincial and federal organisations and housing authorities. The issue was raised during a meeting under the chairmanship of Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, here at the Chief Minister's House on Thursday. The meeting was told that Karachi division had over 900,212 acres, of which 60,000 acres had been occupied illegally by some provincial and federal organisations and housing authorities. It was told that the illegal occupation always appeared on the un-surveyed lands.
The Chief Minister said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan had given directions for computerisation of land record. "What the BoR has done so far in this regard," he asked. Member Board of Reconvene (BoR), Zulfikar Shah, said that the Supreme Court had directed that the land record of different dehs, burnt during the martyrdom of Benazir Bhutto, be verified at taluka level. "We have started verification work in three talukas ie Jamshoro, Matiari and Tando Allahyar," he added.
Shah said that there were 6000 dehs all over Sindh, of them the record of 4,000 dehs had been computerised. After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the record of 870 dehs was burnt and so far the BoR had retrieved and computerised the record of 720 dehs, he told the meeting. Replying to a question of the CM, the BoR member said that the Karachi division had over 900,221 acres of land, of which 681,000 acres was Naclass land or what is termed as un-surveyed land and 641,406 acres was surveyed land.
"This is why 60,000 acres of Sindh government land is under the illegal occupation of different provincial and federal housing and development authorities and agencies," he said and added that some of them were MDA, LDA, KPT and some housing authorities. Replying to another question, the Member BoR said that 6,000 acres of government land had been illegally occupied by private people. "This shows that 60,000 acres of government land has been grabbed by government agencies," he added.
The CM directed the BoR to expedite the survey work so that illegally occupied government land could be retrieved. "I will not allow anybody to illegally occupy even a single inch of Sindh government land," he warned. Shah said that computerised record had been verified by tapedar, mukhtiarkar and the assistant commissioner. "This is the safest way of verification and computerising," he added.
The chief minister said that the Supreme Court had given observations that some fictitious entries had been made in the record. On this, Shah said that the khatidars had received over 6,000 certified copies of their record of rights from 27 services centres of BoR established all over Sindh but not a single complaint of the factious record had been received so far. "We are custodian of the record of rights and are making sincere efforts towards making the record genuine and perfect," he said and assured the chief minister that not a single fictitious entry would be allowed at any cost. The member BoR said that he had also computerised thousands of deh maps, which reflected survey numbers along with a detailed map of the land, area and ownership. "We are going to launch them very soon because this process has taken some time, as most of the maps were damaged," he added. He showed different applications of the computerisation system to the chief minister. The chief minister directed the BoR to follow the directions of the Supreme Court in completion of the computerisation work.