Railways accelerate ongoing anti-encroachment operation against land grabbers

ISLAMABAD, Nov 30 (APP):Pakistan Railways (PR) has decided to accelerate its ongoing anti-encroachment operation against land grabbers across the country to recoup its land from different individuals, groups and even business organisations using it for residential, commercial and agriculture purposes for decades.

“The encroachment operation will be launched with the assistance of Railway Police and district administrations of the provincial governments,” an official in the Ministry of Railways told APP.

He said that PR has retrieved around 478 acres precious land worth billion of rupees from illegal occupants under its anti-encroachment operation across the country during the present government tenure.
Giving details, the official said the department retrieved 245 acres land in Punjab, 123 acres from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 94 acres from Sindh and 16 acres from Balochistan.

To a question, he said that more than 5,000 acres of PR’s land was under encroachment in Sindh and currently in the use of different individuals, groups and even business organisations.
The official said that PR possessed around 45,663 acres of land in its Karachi and Sukkur divisions and as many as 39,759 of acres were in operational use.

He said the government was taking several steps to retrieve encroached land from the land grabbers including detailed survey was being carried out to identify the encroached land, occupied by the individuals and under illegal occupation of various government departments.
The official said that First Information Reports (FIRs) were being lodged and cases were registered and sent to PR Judicial Magistrates for expeditious trial.

The issue regarding illegal occupation and possession of PR’s land by government departments and institutions has also been taken up with the concerned departments, he added.
He said it was an ongoing campaign which would continue till the elimination and regularization of encroachments.

The official said PR owned 167,690 acres of land across the country, of which 90,326-acre was in Punjab, 39,428-acre in Sindh, 28,228-acre in Balochistan and 9,708-acre in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.