Punjab plans selling 8 million acres state land

[Xeric]

Punjab plans selling 8 million acres state land | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online

Punjab plans selling 8 million acres state land
By: Yasir Habib Khan | Published: July 06, 2009


LAHORE - The Punjab government is planning to sell out around 8 million acres of public land owned by different government departments with a view ‘to protect it from the land mafia’.
Out of total 11.8 million acres of land, one million is unused, while more than 8 million acres of agri and urban land worth trillion of rupees is lying vacant. Earlier in 2008, the Revenue Department had announced to regulate them but the move could not be materialised.
According to sources, last month the Punjab government had sought recommendations from all the DCOs to save the land from squatters. After analysing the proposals, a consensus was reached that a step to sell the public land would not only discourage the illegal occupants but also help generate billion rupees as revenue.
According to the Department of Colonies in the Board of Revenue, Punjab government owns 10.8 million acres, out of which, 7.7 million acres belong to different departments. The government has leased out more than 2.3 million acres while 20293 and 2302 acres are used for horse-upbringing and cattle-upbringing schemes respectively.
The available record says that in Attock, out of more than 1.2 million of state land, only 268 acres is in government’s possession, while in Bahawalpur 106001 acres are in the practical possession of the government departments out of a total of more than 229003 acres.

 

[brilTek]

A nice initiative, I must say considering land mafia.

Lets hope it not get distributed among MPAs, MNAs and their relatives.

Instead of selling agri land, this should be leased out to foriegn countries for 40-50 years. This will not only bring foreign investement to country but latest trends & tools to increase yield. Many would be interested due to recent price hike in food items.

 

[Xeric]

Nobody blamed this one on the Army yet. Strange?!

 

[SSGPA1]

soon there will be another castle some whwere around Rai Wand

..... just kidding ... seems like a good plan .... is there any land allocated for the widows and orphans of our soldiers??

 

[Xeric]

i hope that after the land has been sold, the govt and its departments dont face a problem, when they want to re-acquire the land for their domestic use. Ofcourse they would re-buy it from the new owners but i am nit sure they would give it back that easily. Some kind of restrictions should be there, like; the govt cant r-buy the land before xyz number of years and may be that after the lapse of these years if the govt want to re-acquire the land the owner is bound to sell it back to the govt etc etc.

 

[SSGPA1]

good point ... we have seen such things in the past and specially in NS' govt.