LAHORE, April 9: Encroachments on the railway land have virtually deprived the organization of undertaking any expansion plan, especially in Lahore.

A visit to the Badami Bagh-Shahdara strip along the railway track on Tuesday revealed that thousands of people were living in Kutcha Abadis less than 20 feet from the track and many a lives might be lost in case of a train derailment in the area.

In fact there should be four rail tracks —- two for passenger and as many for freight traffic —- for smooth railway movement. But the encroachment problem along the Badami Bagh-Shahdara belt was so complicated that there was hardly any space for laying even a single more track there.

The land encroachment phenomena started soon after the partition. In 1970, PPP government minister Dr Mubashar Hasan gave ownership rights to occupants. However, the idea of Kutcha Abadi was developed during the late Zia’s regime when the military government had recognized and regularized every Kutcha Abadis comprising at least 100 houses. Funds were also allocated for the provision of basic amenities to such localities that helped land mafia speed up its activities.

In 1985, the political government of Muhammad Khan Junejo reduced the number of houses from 100 to 40 for grant of ownership rights to occupants.

This further encouraged the land mafia and it began encroaching upon more and more state land and building residential as well as commercial plazas on it.

So far at least 3,570 acres of the railway land had come under illegal encroachment, including 163 Kutcha Abadis over 1,211 acres —- 85 in the Punjab over 469 acres, 76 in Sindh over 732 acres, and two in the NWFP over 11 acres.

Many of these localities had been recognized by the provincial Kutcha Abadis director-general without seeking any NoC from the railway authorities.

The railway authorities were determined that they would never surrender the land around railway stations and the piece of land between two stations. They also wanted to retrieve the land in commercial use of encroachers.

“There are 350 shops on the railway land only in Kanganpur which can no longer be considered a Kutcha Abadi,” Railways Property and Land Director Brig Akhtar Ali Baig (retired) said. “We were ready to regularize the pre-1985 land encroachment cases as provided under a decision of the railways ministry,” he said, “and offered the encroachers a 99-year lease. But they did not pay even a single penny in this regard.”

He said keeping in view the market rates the railways had offered the encroachers a special price to get proprietary rights of land. The rate for the Punjab had been fixed at an average of Rs6 million per acre, for Sindh Rs8 million per acre and for the NWFP Rs6.7 million per acre.

“The step could fetch a revenue of over Rs8.738 billion to the organization.”

The Sartaj Aziz committee formed in 1990 by the then PML government to review the railway land encroachment issue had declared that all encroachments within 100 feet from the centre of the main line and 50 feet from the centre of branch line must be removed, Mr Baig said.

“We have to remove all such encroachments to keep sufficient space for future expansion plans and save the people from loss of life in case of a derailment,” he said.

The organization could not also afford to allow the people encroach upon its residential colonies, he said, adding at over two dozen places Kutcha Abadis had been developed in such colonies.

He said so far 861 acres of land had been retrieved from illegal encroachers in many areas up to February, 2002.

The railways owned a total 160,000 acres of land out of which 124,000 was in operational use. At least, 3,500 acres of land had been licenced/leased out.