SUKKUR, June 7: The question of the ownership of land has stirred a controversy between the railway authorities and the district government officials as the two sides discussed the interrupted demolition operation which had led to violence near the local railway station a few days back.

Railway police had to use live ammunition after baton-charge and tear-gas shelling failed to disperse angry mobs putting up a stiff resistance to the demolition of scores of houses in a Katchi Abadi on Monday last. An infant and five other people were wounded during the violence following which the operation was suspended.

Intervening into the matter, the district government convened a meeting on Friday to avoid recurrence of such a situation. The meeting was attended by the DCO, Nisar Ahmed Siddiqi, besides the railway and city police officials. The Zila Nazim of Sukkur, Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, presided over the meeting and heard the grievances of the affected people and the stand of the railway authorities.

The railway officials told the Zila Nazim that the operation to demolish houses was started to clear the railway land encroached upon by the landgrabbers. Directives to this regard had been given by the federal minister for railways, they added.

They contended that hundreds of residential quarters, meant for the railway employees, had been occupied by unscrupulous people who had rented them out to others long ago.

Elaborating their plan, the officials said that they intended to dislodge the people residing in the occupied quarters in the first phase and demolish the illegal structures raised on the railway land in the second. They maintained that by occupying an extra land around these quarters, the occupants had turned the small houses into bungalows and paying rent to the landgrabbers who are behind the scene.

They told the district administration that they would be implementing the minister’s orders and if anyone had any objection, it should be conveyed to the ministry.

The railway officials also pin-pointed the areas occupied by the landgrabbers and turned into the drug dens and criminals’ sanctuary.

The Zila Naib Nazim, Iqbal Dawood, did not agree fully with the railway officials’ contention and said that the entire locality, where from the demolition work was started on Monday, was never owned by the Railways. Instead, he added, it was the Revenues land already declared as Katchi Abadi.

The district authorities made it quite clear to the railway officials that they could only get vacated the railway quarters occupied illegally.

The Zila Nazim concluded that the operation to dislodge any resident of the Katchi Abadi should be suspended till the matter of land ownership was solved. He recalled that President Musharraf had directed the relevant authorities to regularize the Katchi Abadis.