Land dispute: Gordon College ‘under siege from encroachers’

Group known as Sialkot Mission claims they are the original occupants of the area where the college was constructed.

RAWALPINDI: It is difficult to serve as a college principal when the institute is entangled in six different land occupation cases, said Gordon College Rawalpindi Principal Dr Abdul Qayyum Bhatti while talking to The Express Tribune.

According to a list prepared by the college administration, there are 24 illegal occupants living in the college’s residential apartments, which include former staff of the college. However, a group known as the Sialkot Mission claims that they are the original occupants of the area where the college has been constructed.

The college sent numerous reminders to the Rawalpindi administration time and again, but the administration’s delayed response has led occupants to cause litigation against the college administration, said Bhatti. “Even the worst encroachments could have been controlled through timely action,” he said.

Records show that the Sialkot Mission had moved a contempt of court application against the college principal for allowing further construction in the college premises for BS programs.

While the college administration claims that the Lahore High Court, in its order on December 22, 2009, had allowed Gordon college to maintain its current status in the given property.

Moreover, the college administration alleged that a member of their staff, Assistant Professor Naeem Nathanial, was also involved in illegal construction inside the college premises. Bhatti said that he sought disciplinary action against Nathanial from the education department Punjab, which too was ignored.

In a letter addressed to the city administration, Bhatti wrote, “Taking benefit of the increasing number of encroachments on the government college’s land, an influential neighbour, Muhammad Saleem Cheema, has encroached around five feet into the college premises after demolishing a college wall and confiscating its bricks.

The encroacher constructed a wall and a staircase on the area overnight.

The principal, in a later application addressed to the city police station on February 2, 2010 wrote, “The influential neighbour, Cheema, has now encroached more than half of the FSc Chemistry laboratory and has constructed a partitioning wall in the room. This is where the water well and water suction plant of the college was installed.

“The city administration, it seems, is least interested in retrieving Gordon college’s land from the possession of influential land mafia,” the principal added in despair.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 25^th, 2011.