PESHAWAR, Jan 14: Sarhad Tourism Corporation (STC) is making a fresh bid to acquire the Moghal-era Balahisar Fort from the Frontier Corps (FC) after several failed attempts in the past. If the FC vacates the historical site it would be opened to tourists visiting Peshawar.

The Fort was allotted to FC to set up its headquarters there in 1949. The STC first requested its vacation in 1999 and thereafter held several meetings with the concerned authorities but the request was not granted. The case was ultimately shelved in 2005.

However, according to official sources, in 2001 the then governor, Iftikhar Hussain Shah, had issued directives to the department ‘to take up a case with the federal government that all forts presently in possession of the Army/Frontier Corps should be handed over to the NWFP government for promotion of tourism’. After the issue was taken up with the ministry of Interior, the FC HQs agreed to open the Balahisar Fort to tourists on fixed days but didn’t agree to vacate it due to absence of alternate accommodation and logistical considerations.

The Peshawar Development Authority (PDA) however had allotted 54 acres of land in Hayatabad to FC in 1990 as part of 100 acres of land required for the headquarter. The FC demanded to be paid Rs.779 million and the allotment of the remaining 46 acres of land in Hayatabad to make vacation possible. The committee formed in March 2005 on the issue proposed that since it was impossible for the provincial government to arrange the sum and make the huge piece of land available, the proposal be put on hold. The STC proposal for the transfer was therefore dropped in August 2005. One big reason for the decision was that no other department could keep the Fort in such excellent condition of maintenance as the FC had done.

The story, however, does not end there. According to an official of the provincial government, “the FC has received land in phase-VI where an FC colony, bungalows and a big piece of land has been leased out to a private school in Hayatabad and still it is demanding more land for its headquarters whereas presently its headquarters in the Fort occupy only 25 acres”.