CHITRAL, March 7 Residents of Chew Doke village have accused the management of Chitral Gol National Park (CGNP) project of forcing them to evacuate their houses constructed on the land gifted to them by the rulers of the former princely state of Chitral.

Hundreds of villagers led by Qazi Mohammad Naseem and Haji Mohammad Jalil gathered outside the Chitral Press Club on Saturday and addressed a press conference.

They said that the piece of land belonged to the royal family and the rulers granted residential plots to more than 500 people who had raised their houses there.

They said that now the CGNP management claimed that the land was part of the park and wanted them to evacuate their houses.

The residents warned that they would migrate to 'other country' en bloc if they were forced out of their village.

They alleged that the officials of the project had implicated a large number of residents in false police cases to persecute them.

The residents said that the government was providing shelter to the homeless in other parts of the country but in Chitral the opposite was happening. They said that at the beginning of the project, the residents of Chew Doke were recognised as its beneficiaries and were included in the village conservation committee.

They said that there were some elements who misled the project management to drive a wedge between them to create a situation leading to their evacuation.

“When I planted a sapling in the compound of my house, the project officials rushed to the police station to register a case of encroachment in the national park against me”, complained a resident.

The residents alleged that the CGNP project had utterly failed to achieve its objectives. They further alleged that the management of the project had felled as many as 119 trees of deodar in the park which was not allowed.