The provincial governments’ commercial, residential, and agricultural land has been requested by the ministry of railways in order to increase the department’s revenue.
“In this regard, the Ministry of Railways had already sent a letter to the provincial governments pressing them to transfer possession of the land as it was the Railways’ property,” a Ministry official told APP.
He continued by saying that various private, individual, and government departments have been found to be occupying a large amount of the 9,986 acres of land belonging to Pakistan Railways illegally.
According to the official, there were up to 3,287 acres of land occupied in Punjab, 832 acres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that were being encroached upon, 5,180 acres in Sindh, and 687 acres in Balochistan that were under occupation.
However, he said that during several anti-encroachment operations across the nation, Pakistan Railways has recovered up to 986 acres of its land worth millions of dollars from the land squatters.
Around 484 acres were recovered in Punjab, 141 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 335 in Sindh, and only 26 in Balochistan, he continued.
He said that various parties had encroached on 6,87 acres of land in Balochistan and 3,287 acres of land in Sindh, as well as 832 acres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 5,180 acres in Punjab.
According to the official, Pakistan Railways also made the decision to step up its ongoing anti-encroachment campaign against land squatters throughout the nation in order to reclaim its land from various people, organizations, and even commercial enterprises that had been using it for residential, commercial, and agricultural uses for decades.
The Railway Police and district administrations of the appropriate provincial governments will cooperate in the commencement of the encroachment operation, he continued.
He said that the government was taking multiple actions to reclaim encroached land from land speculators, including conducting a thorough survey to identify the encroached land that was both occupied by people and illegally occupied by various government agencies.
167,690 acres total, of which 90,326 acres were in Punjab, 39,428 acres were in Sindh, 28,228 acres were in Balochistan, and 9,708 acres were in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to the official.