Encroached land: Civic agency asked to demarcate QAU land

Previous attempts by CDA to demarcate land were met by opposition from locals

ISLAMABAD: The country’s most prestigious public varsity — Quaid-e-Azam University — has renewed efforts to ‘persuade’ the capital’s civic agency to carry out formal demarcation of nearly 1,700 acres of land that the institution controls.

The office of QUA Vice-Chancellor Dr Javed Ashraf has written a letter to the CDA chairman requesting him to demarcate the land as university property so that the area can be secured by with a new boundary wall.

The request comes in the wake of last week’s attack at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, where 20 people including 14 students lost their lives.

A similar request was made by QAU management after the 2014 Army Public School, Peshawar attack in which 141 people were killed, including 132 schoolchildren. However, the requests for land demarcation have not been entertained by the authorities.

Previously, some efforts were made by the CDA to demarcate land, but due to physical harassment of agency staff by locals occupying the university land, the exercise was never completed.

The university administration and the CDA identified some 18 pockets on the sprawling cam-pus area where old villages are still inhabited. These villages have yet to be relocated by the authorities.

Through a letter, the QAU VC also drew the attention of the CDA chair towards encroachments on university land.

“Hundreds of families have been sitting on varsity land for the past several decades, while fresh encroachments are also a matter of concern for the management,” said Prof Asif Ali, QAU’s academic staff association president.

“We don’t have an exact idea from where university land starts and where it ends,” he said, adding that this issue if further compounded when locals claim to be the rightful owners of the land they occupy.

“Everyone is worried about securing educational institutes, but no one is ready to take action on the ground,” Asif lamented.

The absence of a boundary wall makes it difficult to guard the premises and leaves it vulnerable to crimes and terrorism. CDA spokesperson Ramzan Sajid rebutted the claim that land was never demarcated.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2016.