Any operation against the land mafia will be successful only if the force is significant and the timing kept a secret.
KARACHI: This is with reference to a report in your newspaper of September 5 which said that the federal interior minister had directed the officials under his command to ensure that all government land encroached by the land mafia is freed from the control of the latter. However noble the directive may be, the fact of the matter is that this mafia did not emerge overnight. It has been systematically grabbing Karachi’s land for years, and most governments did nothing about it. This inaction led most citizens to believe that perhaps the land mafia was paying off those in power since the latter always chose to look the other way, or that those in power were actually directly involved in the land-grabbing.
The interior minister’s remarks were followed by a statement by the prime minister who seemed kind enough to allow the land-grabbers a grace period of one month to vacate the government land on a voluntarily basis or face action. Quite frankly, this statement didn’t make too much sense because either the government should just act or stay quiet. Giving the one-month time frame would mean that those who are involved should try their luck obtaining stay orders from the courts. Of course in this the judiciary will also have to play its due role in ensuring that land-grabbers do not misuse the law for their own ends. There are many cases of even flats and houses in which people who are not legal owners are living and where the actual owners have to turn to the courts to obtain possession of their property.
Any operation or campaign against the land mafia will be successful only if the force is significant and the timing kept a secret.
Mukhtar Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, September 7th, 2011.
