ISLAMABAD
Prime Minister Imran Khan has directed the provinces to immediately complete anti-encroachment legislation besides pursuing the pending cases of encroached state land.
PM Imran Khan issued the directives while chairing the meeting of the National Coordination Committee (NCC) on Housing, Construction and Development on Friday.
During a briefing, the Surveyor General of Pakistan told the NCC that 88 percent cadastral mapping of the state land has been completed. The cadastral mapping helped the government to identify illegal encroachments on the state land, it added.
The estimated worth of the hundreds of acres of encroached land is trillions as most of the encroachments were spotted in forest land. The authorities also identified encroachments on the state land owned by WAPDA, NHA, CAA and railways.
The NCC members were apprised that the digitalisation of the private land will be carried out with the cooperation of provincial governments in the next phase. PM Imran Khan expressed satisfaction over the progress on cadastral mapping of the state land and directed to complete the verification process within two months.
He ordered to carry out plantation on the state land cleared of encroachments. The premier also directed the provincial governments and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) to pursue the pending cases of encroached state land.
Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance Shaukat Tarin, State Minister Farrukh Habib, special assistants Malik Amin Aslam, Dr Shahbaz Gill, FBR chairman, Naya Pakistan Housing and Development Authority chairman, senior officers of the federal and provincial governments were also present in the meeting.
Earlier, PM Imran Khan has launched a cadastral mapping project for digitalising land records to end illegal constructions and record tampering. Cadastral mapping project is a modernise digital shape of patwar system which implementation will end land record tempering via providing accurate information regarding the land ownership and monitoring of construction through imagery.
While addressing the launching event of the cadastral map of Islamabad, PM Imran Khan has stated that the government should have computerised many things earlier but the land grabbing mafia was against it. PM Khan said that influential persons used to earn money by seizing land.
Regarding the cadastral project, PM Khan said that digitalise mapping of Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore will be completed soon. The premier said that the government has retrieved land worths billion during the three years. The digital system will provide all information about the real owner of the land.
He said that 1,000 acres of forest land had been grabbed in Islamabad, whereas, the land grabbing mafia became much stronger and resisting any improvement in the system. He said that Pakistan is also facing a big issue of pollution as nobody has paid attention to the issue in the past.
PM Khan said that the overseas Pakistanis are a big asset of the country and they purchased land with hard-earned money which was later captured by the grabbers. He added that the supremacy of law attracts investment and the computerisation of the land record system will bring transparency.
He said that the federal government was making efforts to computerise the system of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Through the modern system, people could sell the land online in the next six to seven months in future.
He noted that the government will create eases by the use of technology in the country saying the prices of land have increased rapidly and the technology will now defeat the grabbers’ group.
The premier said that 50 per cent of cases are about land disputes in the courts, whereas, it was made so difficult to transfer the ownership of the land as the people were forced to pay bribes for completing the legal formalities.
It is worth mentioning that cadastral mapping project has been launched to modernise the old ‘patwar system’ into a digital online system as its phase-I comprises digitisation of revenue records of three major cities including Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. Geographical Information System has been used to complete the digitalisation of Islamabad Capital Territory by the Survey of Pakistan.
The project will help the overseas Pakistanis to verify online information before purchasing land in Islamabad besides identifying the illicit hinging of state land, encroachment at nullah and forests.
