ISLAMABAD, Oct 17 A plan to develop a forest park over 350 acres in Malpur has been shelved due to political interference and land grabbing by the residents of the village.

The project costing around Rs239 million was conceived by the Planning Commission as a model for implementation of forest projects by provinces at the district level across the country.

The park was to be located off Kashmir Highway between the Malpur village and Bharakahu. The project was sponsored by the Planning Commission while the Capital Development Authority was the executing agency.

However, the project was shelved by the CDA on the alleged interference of Senator Nayyar Hussain Bukhari, leader of the house in Senate, who is also a resident of the Malpur village.

Talking to Dawn, Mr Bukhari said a wrong procedure had been adopted by the CDA for environment protection. “I am opposed to the methodology adopted by the CDA to develop the forest park,” said Mr Bukhari, adding, “The only way to preserve forest is to provide natural gas to the area, so that the locals would not chop forest for use as firewood.”

He also criticised the Planning Commission for conceiving what he called 'a wasteful project' and said the Rs300 million should rather be spent on provision of natural gas to the area.

However, the issue has not remained confined to the development of forest near Malpur, as the lucrative land near Islamabad city has now become a bone of contention between the locals and the authorities concerned. The launching of the forest park was scheduled at the end of July 2009 but the project even failed to take off, as officials of PC could not get encroachments on the land removed.

The Planning Commission officials told Dawn that their joint efforts with the CDA had failed to make a breakthrough and in a meeting with the local residents the delegation from Malpur village refused to give up the land that they were occupying.

“The residents of Malpur stated that they do not recognise the agreement made by their elders in the '60s, and the CDA was welcomed to take back the amount it had paid to the locals,” said a senior official of PC.

However, backed by the land department of CDA, the locals have proposed a package deal and sources in the authority said that under the political pressure the planning department of the CDA had started to carve out 2,400 plots over 200 acres of the said land to establish a model village.

Even Mr Bukhari has supported the idea. “CDA has never fulfilled its promises one of which was to set up a model village in Malpur,” he said adding “We have suffered the most after the establishment of Islamabad and 56,000 kanals of our land have been taken away at a throwaway price by the CDA.”

However, on way towards scrapping the forest park project, it was taken away from the Planning Commission and transferred to the cabinet division, while the CDA has restrained itself from removing the encroachments.