Landowners carrying placards and raising slogans against the authorities is a common sight at Bhatta Chowk. They are up against the government plan to widen the bottleneck. Though landowners are raising hue and cry against the project, officials defend the expansion.Khwaja Imran Raza, principal staff officer of the chief minister, says: “Bhatta Chowk land is a government property and it can be used to serve people’s interest.” He says: “The Punjab government understands the grievances of the affected landowners and is trying to compensate them in the best possible way.”
Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif decided to start work on Bhatta Chowk expansion last month. Connecting the new airport terminal to Defence Housing Authority, Bhatta Chowk has become a busy junction and is a host to never-ending traffic queues at rush hours. The government decided to expand the Chowk to relieve people of this discomfort. But like before, markets built on the margins of the road stand as a big hurdle in the way of expansion.
No matter how justified the expansion may seem to the city government, grievances of those affected cannot be ignored.
Many, like trader Muhammad Akram, have spent several years of their life here and are against relocation come what may.
Nevertheless, many people are ready to relocate their businesses to other parts of the city, but they say the proposed compensation is too meagre to motivate them to relocate. Navid Ahmed is not ready to give his shop “for peanuts” and says: “I bought this shop for Rs4 million per Marla two years ago. The suggestion to give it away to the government just for Rs800,000 per Marla is outrageous.”
Hardboard seller Muhammad Zeeshan says: “We will not sell our land to the government at this petty rate when it has acquired land in Mughalpura for the same purpose for Rs1.6 million per Marla.”
“Seeing uneasiness among the landowners, Yasin Sohail from the PP-156 constituency asked the protesters to come up with a 10-member delegation to explicate their demands at the Chief Minister’s House,” says a protester. However, some campaigners like Hafiz Arif are dissatisfied with composition of the delegation.
Bedian Road traders’ representative Shahid Mahmud Mughal is confident about the potential of government cooperation and says: “We have voted for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and its leadership can’t backstab us. Given the trust of the fellow landowners we enjoy, we will surely win the argument.”
It’s not only the shopkeepers around Bhatta Chowk who have reservations about the project. Baba Allah Rakha, who owns a battery shop at the stretch of the junction, says the expansion project will affect his business. “Who knows how badly my shop will suffer from the loss of Bhatta Chowk market.”
Despite landowners’ disregard for the compensation money, they are still better off than the tenants who have literally nothing to claim. “No matter what number of years they have spent earning livelihood in the area, they still cannot claim a penny,” says electrician Iftikhar who is being harassed by patwaris to evacuate his rented shop. He says landowners are throwing tenants out of their shops without even returning the money they received in advance. We are the most affected, as neither the government nor landowners are recognising our rights.”A source in the Lahore Cantonment Board says there is no plan to help tenants get some compensation.
Amidst all this confusion, worried shopkeepers are looking toward their representatives in the Punjab Assembly. One of them is Khwaja Saad Rafiq, who is trying to get maximum compensation for the people of his constituency. — Dure Nayab