KARACHI: The Sindh government has taken no steps to reconstruct and renovate a degree college burnt by the ‘land mafia’ four months ago, a recent visit to the institution situated near Banaras Chowk in Manghopir showed.

With the charred façade and some interior sections, including a computer laboratory, broken ceilings and furniture, the college building is posing a serious threat to the lives of teachers and students whose number, it’s gathered, has dropped significantly after the incident.

“I got an FIR registered when the fire took place on an early September morning. Later, an education department team visited the college on our complaint but work on the damaged spots hasn’t started,” said Naseem Afsar, acting principal of the college.

According to sources, the fire erupted in the large sacks placed along the college boundary wall by traders, who were found to have occupied the college front land to keep their shoe stocks.

The traders, the sources said, belonged to the same mafia that had got the college land illegally transferred to their name years ago and had been pressuring the college staff to vacate the land.

During the visit, it was found that a big market flourished on the college land.

“That’s why we believe that the arson was tactics of the same land mafia to force us to leave the remaining college land,” said a college staff member on condition of anonymity.

The matter of the college’s illegal occupation, according to sources, has been pending with the Anti-Corruption Establishment since 2004. An application has also been filed with the National Account­ability Bureau.

Tahir Sawati, a social worker who has been fighting for the college land for years, claims that more college land has come under illegal occupation because of government inaction. “I have submitted applications to the commissioner of Karachi as well as the director general of Rangers on this issue. But it is surprising that they are silent over it,” he said.

The educational institution, he said, was the only boys degree college in SITE and Orangi towns. “It was used to be in Orangi but when new local government demarcations were done, it was included in SITE Town,” he said.

Though the government college has been in a dilapidated state for a long time, no renovation has ever been carried out on the institution under the pretext that the college exists on a trust land, the sources add.

College planned to be a university

Named after Maulana Abdul Hamid Badayuni, an Islamic scholar, statesman and author, the college was planned to be a major institution of Islamic and modern learning (Jamia Taleemaat-i-Islamia) for which a 15-acre amenity plot was leased out by the government in 1962 and 1963.

The request for the lease was made by the late Maulana Badayuni who then headed Markazi Anjuman-i-Tableeghul Islam, Karachi. The land was allotted with the condition that if the Anjuman failed to utilise the land for the specific purpose within three years, the government status of the land would resume.

Documents show that five acres of the college land was “sub-leased” to encroachers in 1997 in contravention of Section 19 of the Land Grant Policy of 1975.

The Karachi Building Control Authority had also declared the market as illegal.

“The market (Pakhtun market near the Badayuni college, SITE Town) has been built by encroaching the amenity plot and the encroachment is still going on. The matter is already under inquiry before the competent authority,” says a letter by deputy controller, SITE Town, KBCA, to the relevant town municipal officer.

“It is requested that the case please be referred to the concerned authority for removal of the encroachment under its statutory responsibility.”

Upon contact, the director for colleges in Karachi, Zamir Khoso, said he would visit the college site as he was not satisfied with the report submitted by his staff on the fire incident.

“The report refers to the fire and illegal occupation of the college land but lacks specific points and recommendations. I will visit it soon and take up the matter with my higher officials and the provincial coordination committee that includes the commissioner of Karachi and Rangers officials,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2016