Railways struggle to retrieve 4,120 acres of its land

Encroachers include government offices, defence and private bodies

ISLAMABAD: The matter of retrieval of its own land has become an issue for Pakistan Railways as 4,120 acres of land worth Rs89 billion has been encroached across the country by both private and government institutions, including army and rangers.

For the last several years, Pakistan Railways (PR) has been doing its utmost to get the problem of land encroachment resolved where thousands of acres of land has been occupied for commercial, residential and agriculture purposes, leaving the organisation exasperated.



Interestingly, government institutions are also involved in encroaching the land of Pakistan Railways, though most of it has been regularised through settlement with the latter.

As per records, in Punjab 2,091 acres of land has been encroached upon by private groups, government offices and different departments of defence.

Similarly, 1,159 acres of land in Sindh; 618 acres of land in Balochistan and 250 acres of land in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) has been occupied for different purposes.

Of these, around 1,903 acres of land had been occupied for agriculture purposes and about 1,317 acres for residential purposes. About 540 acres of land, however, was occupied by government departments in all the four provinces and 251 acres by departments of defence.

As per estimates of the Ministry of Railways, the net value of all 4,120 acres of encroached land was Rs89 billion.

“This is an ongoing process and we are trying to reach a solution with all the stakeholders,” said Parveen Agha, Ministry of Railways Secretary while talking to The Express Tribune.

She said they were still struggling for the commutation of land in provinces for titling as per the orders of Supreme Court. “Of all the provinces only K-P has cooperated for the titling of land while talks with the rest of the provinces are under way,” she concluded.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s  Hamidul Haq has been facing challenges in his (NA-2) and NA-1 constituencies regarding encroachment and has been keenly following the issue since his victory in the by-election. He terms the issue dangerous and commented that the encroachers had become mafias especially those who have constructed residential colonies. “We went to visit such lands in Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar and other cities. We were told that it could lead to bloodshed but we went any way,” he said.

In 2011, the then chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry gave orders for anti-encroachment drive and computerisation of land, but that has yet to be followed properly though some inroads had been made.

A senior official of the ministry who wished anonymity said that backing of political elite was the primary cause for glitches and challenges in retrieving the land. “Many of our politicians and people directly or indirectly connected with them are involved in this business, hampering our efforts for across the board action,” he concluded.

Since 2012 about 3,683 acres of land worth Rs17 billion has been retrieved while 1,692 acres of land retrieved from Pakistan Rangers was regularised of which 1,255 acres belonged to army and 437 acres belonged to the Rangers.



As part of standard operating procedure of the PR, police investigations were initiated against people involved in encroachment or were unwilling to vacate the land and so far 3,026 people have been arrested in such operations.

A system to computerise land records through assessment management system for Pakistan Railways has also been introduced. Countrywide Pakistan Railways has 167,690 acres of land of which Punjab has 90,326 acres; Sindh has 39,428 acres; Balochistan has 28,228 acres and K-P has 9,707 acres.