LAHORE, June 12: The work on Bab-i-Pakistan project has once again been thwarted despite urgency shown by the Punjab governor.
Dawn learnt on Wednesday the new hurdle has been created by the architecture company which had first made design of the monument after going through a competition.
The company wants the design to be accepted while the authorities handling the project are trying to decide whether it would be feasible to adopt it.
“The new issue has certainly delayed work on the project which has otherwise no other hurdle at the moment,” official sources said.
Punjab Information Secretary Kamran Lashari, who is also the director of the Bab-i-Pakistan project, said the company was selected for the design in 1994 which was approved by a high-level committee.
“Now the company wants us to adopt the design, saying the Bab-i-Pakistan has been its passion,” Mr Lashari said, adding “we now are facing this problem but will resolve it during the next 10 to 15 days.”
According to him, rejecting the already prepared design was a complicated issue but it would be more problematic to get another one prepared. “It will take four to six months to select another architect company and to get prepared another design which is time consuming,” he said.
The Bab-i-Pakistan project was Launched in June 1992. It was the brainchild of the former Punjab Chief Minister, late Ghulam Haider Wyne, who wanted to build a national monument at Walton’s 75-acre tract under the Bab-i-Pakistan Trust to pay homage to the people who lost their lives and property during the independence movement.
The place selected for the monument had housed the first and the largest refugees camp in which late Mr Wyne, then a young boy, and his family took refuge along with many others from various parties of India. The camp was also visited by Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
The Punjab government had given Rs95 million and Balochistan Rs2.5 million as the seed money for the project. This was invested with the National Savings Certificates and Special Saving Scheme. It has now touched the figure of Rs244.4 million.
Despite the allocation of the land and the availability of the funds, work on the project could not be started during the past one decade because of the occupation of major portion of the land by boy scouts (20.6 acres), Punjab constabulary (4 acres), army (2.6 acres), dwellers of a kutcha abadi (2.4 acres) and the education department (0.4 kanals).
According to the official record, out of the total 20.6 acres of the occupied land, at least 10 acres was under unauthorized occupation. It required Rs102 million to get vacated the legal occupation.
Finally, Punjab Governor Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbool (retired) visited the site on March 21, 2002, and ordered shifting of police and boy scouts association offices to an adjacent piece of land.
He rejected the idea of dislocating the kutcha abadi at a corner of the Bab-i-Pakistan complex land and the two high schools at its front, directing that the latter should be a part of the complex and shifted somewhere to its rear.
Authorities present there believed the governor had removed all the hurdles in just an hour and the work on the project would be started in near future.
Their belief was strengthened when the governor announced that he would like to lay the foundation stone in early April.
But, currently, there is no foundation stone and those who were occupying the project land are still there.
According to Mr Lashari, all the affairs pertaining to the land have been settled without waiting for the actual shifting of the structures of the occupying agencies. They all would vacate the land but it would take some time, he said. “In the meantime, he claimed we would start creating the theme park and other related structures at the available land.”