RAWALPINDI: A forensic audit of state land in the four districts of the Rawalpindi division will be started next month in order to ascertain how much land is lying vacant.

A senior official of the district administration told Dawn that the land record of departments will be verified from the district Land Revenue Department to check unutilised land and land that belongs to the departments but the records for which are missing.

“Records of the last 30 years will be sought from all government departments regarding the land in their possession and whether or not it is in use,” he said.

After this exercise, he said, the divisional administration will be able to compile the data and the state land will not be sold without the permission of the provincial government.

He said the project was the brain child of the Anti Corruption Establishment (ACE) and that it shared the idea for checking state land in the division after the case of the missing land of the Punjab Forest Department in Islamabad and that the divisional commissioner had agreed to take action.

The Forest Department had owned the land in question since before the establishment of Islamabad and had possession of it till 2000.

However, the official said, portions of the land were included in Bahria Enclave in recent years.

He added that his department then sought a report from the Punjab Forest Department which said it had no record of the land for the last 18 years. The department said the current administration did not know what had happened to the documents for the land in question after the year 2000.

After this, he said, the administration had stressed on the need for checking the record of state land of other departments as well and for an updated record with the government of the land in possession of all departments.

He said the division commissioner had asked the revenue department to make the arrangements for the audit and that ACE will also help in the project.

However, another official of the district administration said that after the establishment of Islamabad, there were issues between the civic bodies of the two cities. For instance, the Rawalpindi Municipal Corporation (RMC) owned land which is now included in the limits of Islamabad.

“Many sites on the border between Rawalpindi and Islamabad were disputed. Many residents are not paying taxes to Rawalpindi, claiming their areas fall in Islamabad when the old record says they are in Rawalpindi,” he said.

Many of these issues between the administrations of Islamabad and Rawalpindi will be resolved after the forensic audit of state land is conducted, he said.

“The Rawalpindi Cantonment Board took the case of the area between Peshawar Road and Kashmir Highway from Pirwadhai Mor to Golra Mor with the Capital Development Authority”, he said.

He added that RMC owned 18 acres in Jhangi Syedan and some land near Khanna Bridge. The land is ideally located and RMC made a request to the Islamabad Capital Territory administration to have it vacated from encroachers a few months ago, he added.

When asked, ACE Rawalpindi Region Director Arif Raheem said the forensic audit will be started soon.

He also stressed on the need for checking the record of land in custody of government departments and to verify it from the Land Revenue Department’s record to avoid cases of missing land in the future.

He said the case of the Punjab Forest Department was transferred from ACE to the National Accountability Bureau recently.

The forest department has also launched an inquiry into how the record went missing, he said.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2019