Pakistan Railways has retrieved land worth Rs 4725.796 million from the illegal occupants during the last one year in operation against the land grab-bers across the country.
“The encroachment operation is launched with the assistance of railway police and district administra-tion of the provincial government,” an official in the Ministry of Railways said.He said Pakistan Railways has retrieved over 502 acres precious land worth billion of rupees from illegal occupants under its anti-encroachment opera-tion across the country during the present govern-ment tenure.
Giving details, the official said the department re-trieved 258 acres land in Punjab, 129 acres from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 97 acres from Sindh and 18 acres from Balochistan.
To a question, he said that more than 5,000 acres of Railways’ land was under encroachment in Sindh and currently in the use of different individuals, groups and even business organisations.
The official said Pakistan Railways possessed around 45,663 acres of land in its Karachi and Suk-kur divisions and as many as 39,759 of acres were in operational use.
He said the government was taking several steps to retrieve encroached land from the land grabbers including detailed survey was being carried out to identify the encroached land, occupied by the indi-viduals and under illegal occupation of various gov-ernment departments.The official said that First Information Reports (FIRs) were being lodged and cases were registered and sent to PR Judicial Magistrates for expeditious trial. The issue regarding illegal occupation and posses-sion of Railways’s land by government departments and institutions has also been taken up with the concerned departments, he added.He said it was an ongoing campaign which would continue till the elimination and regularization of encroachments.
