Influential People Occupied Acres of Railway Land

[Salman]

Government departments and influential people keep occupying 2,612 acres of land of Pakistan Railways. Railways department has been fighting for years for the repossession of its property, scattered across the country.

Various individuals and departments have occupied the land. The Railways department owns 167,690 acres land across the country. A document submitted by PR authorities to Senate Standing Sub-Committee on Pakistan Railways reveal that individual parties occupy 2,062 acres of the PR’s land, civil departments 441,95 acres, while the armed forces hold 106.6 acres.

The document attributes this illegal occupation to “Inadequate Pakistan Railways Police force and lack of cooperation by district police and district administration to handle law and order situation during anti-encroachment campaign in certain provinces.”

The PR administration says, “There is no resolution of title of Railways lands by provincial governments in accordance with Presidential Order No. 1 of 1970. It has resulted in tremendous litigation and indiscriminate granting of stay orders by the civil courts in land matters, which halt the anti-encroachment operation.”

The PR administration is currently fighting against local influential people in Sukkur, who constructed illegal buildings on railway lands in Qamber Shahdad Kot.