Rs60m paid to Ring Road affectees

Only 12 references filed against compensation amount

RAWALPINDI:

Some Rs60 million worth of compensation has been received by the landowners displaced due to the planned construction of the Rawalpindi Ring Road project, officials said on Saturday.

The provincial government has acquired around 6,000 Kanals of land stretching from Radio Pakistan Interchange on GT Road to Kheri Mor in the first phase of Rawalpindi Ring Road.

Land Acquisition Collector Wasim Tabish is supervising the payment of compensation to people who will lose their land due to the Ring Road project. Compensation is being paid at Rawat Computerised Land Record Centre. All the issues stemming from the process have been resolved following the notice of the Rawalpindi commissioner, Tabish told The Express Tribune.

The officer said that only 12 people filed references against the land compensation rate fixed by the government. The references were filed in the court of a designated senior civil judge.

According to sources, if the owners of the acquired land do not receive compensation for the land within the stipulated period and do not even file a reference for an increase in compensation, the right to file the references will be revoked. However, their fixed-rate compensation will remain in the land acquisition collector's account which they can collect whenever they want.

An amount of Rs1.5 billion released by the Punjab government for complete land acquisition has been transferred to the collector’s account.

The award for acquiring 4,000 Kanals of land from 10 locations of Tehsil Fateh Jang for the route is also in the final stages of preparation and is expected to be released soon. The land acquisition collector will also start compensating the landowners of the new area to be acquired.

It has also been revealed that the rates of land adjoining the acquired land for the project have soared up by more than 100 per cent.

Meanwhile, sources said that the 6,000 Kanals of land acquired for the Ring Road project has now become the property of the government, and development work could start immediately.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2021.