FAISALABAD, Jan 18: About 3,955 acres of state land in the city and outside the municipal limits of the district have been illegally occupied by different groups and individuals.

Documents made available to Dawn revealed that the state land encroached in the city is 42 acres, three kanals and 13 marlas, Chak Jhumra 539 acres and two kanals, Jaranwala 1,696 acres, Samundri 589 acres and Tandlianwala 1,088 acres.

Not a single inch of land has been encroached in the Saddar area.

Sources said a couple of months ago the Punjab chief minister had directed the district administrations to launch drive against the land mafia. Despite all out efforts, only 222 acres, five kanals and seven marlas of land have so far been retrieved. Of it, 35 acres land was retrieved in Jaranwala and 187 acres, five kanals and seven marlas in Chak Jhumra, they said.

Some of the revenue department officials have also been tortured when they tried to remove encroachers.

Political interference is a key factor in failure of the staff in land recovery. “Encroachers exert pressure if officials take any initiative against the land grabbers,” sources said, adding patwaris and politician’s strong relations were aggravating the situation.

Most of the patwaris act according to the sweet will of politicians fearing their backlash in the form of transfer.

Sources said DCO Azam Suleman Khan made a huge reshuffle a couple of months ago and transferred all 126 patwaris immediately. The transfer orders were made secretly as patwaris used to ‘hold or misplace’ land record after transfer. After the orders, all patwaris were asked to leave the officials documents in the office. The DCO took this action to eliminate corruption, but to no avail, they maintained.

The district government has set up a cell and only three clerks are working to pursue the cases pending with different courts. However, the shortage of staff in the cell hamper the litigation process and owing to this department has lost many cases, sources added.

An officer told this correspondent on the condition of anonymity that clerks were overburdened and they could not compete the land mafia. Moreover, influential land grabbers hired the services of notable lawyers as compared to the revenue department.

He said most of the towns did not bother to take action against land mafia.

He said without removing bottlenecks and increasing powers of the revenue department, land grabbing could not be stopped.

“The government should formulate new laws to curb the menace of litigation and avert the land grabbing in future. It should also establish an independent cell for proper pursuance of pending cases.”