Pakistan Railways on Friday admitted that over 4,100 acres of its land, worth about Rs 90 billion, are still under encroachment. The Punjab province tops the list where 2,076 acres of land are under encroachment followed by Sindh with 1159 acres, Balochistan with 618 acres and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with 250.9 acres. This was revealed by the Railways officials while briefing the National Assembly Standing Committee on Railways which met with Syed Naveed Qamar in the chair.
Director Land and Property Arshad Salam Khattak briefed the committee members. Railways' land has three types of encroachment comprising commercial, residential and agriculture, besides land under unauthorized occupation of government departments, which comprises 540.668 acres. Defense departments encroached 251.23 acres of land, worth Rs 6.6 billion.
Of the 107 acres commercial land, 72 acres are in Balochistan, 31.53 acres are in Sindh and 3.8 acres are in Punjab; of the 1,317 acres residential land, 442 acres are in Balochistan, 435 acres are in Sindh, and 439 acres are in Punjab; and of the 1,888 acres encroached agriculture land, 46 are in Balochistan, 642 acres are in Sindh, 11 acres are in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 1188 acres in Punjab.
Briefing the committee on steps taken by the Ministry of Railways for the retrieval of Pakistan Railways' land from illegal occupants, Director Land and Property stated that 3,698 acres of Pakistan Railways' land, worth Rs 17.844 billion, have been retrieved from illegal occupants since January 2012.
The committee was informed that Railways has a total of 167,690 acres of land including 90,326 acres in Punjab, 39428 acres in Sindh, 28,228 acres in Balochistan and 9,707 acres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The committee was further informed that Railways leased out 118 acres of land in 2013, 1,437 acres in 2014, 2,107 acres in 2015 and 2683 acre of land in 2016.
Further 1,692 acres of land were regularized including 1,255 acres in favor of Pakistan Army and 437 in favor of Pakistan Rangers. On which the committee chairman said that under what policy the land was regularized and sought detailed policy on the matter in next meeting.
The committee was informed that detailed survey was carried out in the context of suo moto to identify encroached land, unauthorized occupied land by the individual encroachers and the land under illegal possession of government departments.
The issue of forcible possession of Railways land by private and government departments was taken up by the Federal Minister for Railways and he conducted meetings with provincial chief ministers and chief secretaries. The chief ministers have directed the concerned provincial secretaries to resolve railway land issue.
A comprehensive policy has been framed to prevent further encroachments and make the concerned railways officers/ officials and railways police officials jointly responsible in case of any new encroachment. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) and joint procedure orders have been issued for strict implementation of this policy. Cases are being trialed in the courts and the land under unauthorized occupation of encroachers has been retrieved.
A GIS-based land Asset Management System for computerization of railways' land record initiated in 2015 to harmonize the railways' land record with the provincial revenue record and it will be completed in December 2017. Railways engineering code is used to determine valuation of land.
The ministry also informed that some variation is expected in figures after automation of record. The committee rued lack of initiative by the ministry on the issue of encroachment. The committee directed the ministry to furnish it with final and exact figures on retrieved encroached land, its possession and policy governing the entire issue.
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