SAHIWAL, Oct 25: Out of the total 4,180 acres of state land grabbed, 2,433 acres were recovered by three district revenue departments of Sahiwal division.

This was learnt in a high-level meeting with revenue officials at the commissioner’s office on Friday. An aggressive campaign was conducted for recovery of the land following instructions of the Punjab government.

According to the documents seen by Dawn, out of the 2,433 acres recovered, 630 acres were in Sahiwal district, 1,669 Okara district and 130 Pakpattan district. According to the documents, total market value of the recovered state land is around Rs2.3 billion.

Commissioner Sher Alam Masood issued special instructions to recover the remaining 1,747 acres from illegal possession.

For the last one year, revenue officials had been tracing and recovering state land from illegal possession. The meeting was attended by three DCOs, ACs and revenue collector officials of three districts of the division.

CHALLANS: There are 810 challans pending with the courts of special judicial magistrates out of the total 827 in three districts of Sahiwal division.

Only 17 cases had been disposed of by local courts of Pakpattan, Sahiwal and Okara districts this month.

These challans had been submitted by respective district labour departments (DLD) against shopkeepers, cart-pushers and traders who were not using standard weights in violation of Punjab Weight and Measurement Act 1976, Dawn learnt from sources.

The challans were sent to respective special judicial magistrates who were authorised to fine violators between Rs100 and Rs10,000. The DLDs were regularly sending challans to local courts but cases were pending. The Sahiwal DLD had sent 517 cases, Pakpattan 100 and Okara 200 to the special judicial magistrates, but to no avail.

Sahiwal DLO Hyder Shah, while talking to Dawn, confirmed that local courts were moving at a snail’s pace while disposing of challans. He claimed that 50-60 challans were made daily in each district but cases kept piling up over the past few months. The divisional administration had taken notice of the pending cases and asked respective courts to dispose them of at the earliest.

Commissioner Sher Alam Masood expressed concern over ‘inefficiency’ of DLOs of the three districts and asked them to pursue and follow up on the challans with the local courts.