MUZAFFARGARH: The district administration has yet to start operation against encroachment and land grabbing mafias in the district who have constructed shops and houses on the land of graveyards for several years.

After the super flood of 2010, when 796 graveyards were inundated and several graves vanished, land grabbers built shops and houses on them without any check.

In Ghous Pak Hamza graveyard in the city area, where one marla land is more than Rs1 million, several shops and houses have been constructed on graves. The administration has failed to retrieve the land. The city people said they had lots of expectations from the province-wide Green and Clean Pakistan operation but district administration’s poor performance had disappointed them.

Dawn learnt that in Kot Addu and Daira Din Pannah cities, many shopping centres had been constructed on graveyards, and some shops were constructed by a former MNA and other politicians. Not only graveyard land, thousands of fertile acres of the late Sardar Koura Khan Jatoi Trust were also under the use of grabbers and a case regarding the trust land grab is being heard by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

One resident of the city, Ahmad Shah Bukhari, said they watched demolition of illegal constructions only on TV as the operation had been in full swing in other big and small cities of the province whereas Muzaffargarh administration could not begin the operation so far.

Journalist and civil society activist Syed Tahir said that 36 shops were constructed on the land of Auqaf Department in last two decades but no shopkeeper had got any eviction order in the ongoing operation. He said in the revenue record, the graveyard of Ghaus Hamaz had 54 kanals, and of it, 16 kanals had been grabbed.

Malik Azam said he lived in Spur No 3, where decades-old graveyard had been turned into an agriculture farm by the land mafia. In Alipur and Jatoi tehsils, many graveyards had been demolished.

Deputy Commissioner Qaiser Saleem told Dawn he had sent eviction notices to land grabbers and now his teams were ready to begin the operation. He said he had started a grand operation against land grabbers and ordered assistant commissioners to collect data on graveyards land, including their khasra numbers and all illegal structures would be demolished. He said cases would also be registered against them.

He said a grand operation was being launched against those occupying land near the Indus River and for that agriculture and irrigation departments were locating the grabbed land. He said he had ordered Taunsa Barrage Executive Engineer Faisal Mushtaq to get ready for operation.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2018