LAHORE: Nearly 10,000 acres owned by Pakistan Railways (PR) is in illegal occupation of people and most of them are using the land for residential purposes across the country.

However, despite various issues, the railways hopes to achieve its land revenue collection target of Rs5bn in the current financial year ending on June 30, Dawn has learnt.

“As much as 9,644 acres of our 168,858 acres total land is in unlawful possession of the land grabbers across the country. Though we are trying hard to retrieve it from the illegal occupants and remove encroachments, the provincial governments, which are supposed to safeguard the state land being the custodians, are not helping us adequately,” a senior official of the PR deplored while talking to Dawn on Friday.

According to documents, available with Dawn, the total PR’s land (168,858 acres) include 126,426 acres being used by the railways for operational purpose, followed by 6,061 acres reserved for the future operational use, 4,385 acres being used for station and staff colonies, 2,987 acres leased out to government and defence department, 562 acres for Katchi Abadis (regularised), 308 acres having commercial potential revenue and 4,692 acres, which are not in use being barren land but can be utilised for agriculture.

The documents state that 12,777 acres have been leased out so far to public and private parties in all nine divisions of the PR across the country. The leased land includes 9,260 acres agriculture and 530 acres commercial.

In Rawalpindi division, 654 acres agriculture, 86 acres commercial land has been leased out while 162 acres have been leased out to the government departments, followed by Lahore division which has witnessed leasing out of 2,024 acres agriculture, 150 acres commercial and 1436 acres to the government departments.

In the Mughalpura (Lahore) division, 14 acres (commercial land) has been leased out. 17 acres in this division have been leased out to government/defence department. In the Multan division, 5,531 acres agricultural land has been leased out, 120 acres commercial and 370 acres have been leased out to government departments.

Huge chunks of railways land have been leased out in Quetta, Peshawar and Sukkur too.

To a question, the officer said the PR had also decided, in principle, not to declare illegally occupied land as Katchi Abadis under the relevant laws that regularise such possessions by allotting the land to the occupants.

To another question, he said the PR had, so far, collected Rs3bn in the wake of the land revenue collection.

And till June 30, we would achieve the total target of Rs5bn, he hoped.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2024