Believe it or not, the Lahore Development Authority’s (LDA) own-developed housing societies are still not in its own name in the revenue records and the status quo has remained unnoticed since 1975, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Taking advantage of the situation, the land mafia is very active in LDA housing societies and doing a roaring business of sale and purchase of plots through fake documents to swindle millions of rupees from innocent people.
According to senior LDA officials, the authority is facing various problems at the hands of land grabbers who have got court stay orders, claiming ownership of the land. Officials said that after acquisition of land for development of a housing scheme, LDA used to issue a notification mentioning the acquired land.
The said notifications were then sent to the Board of Revenue (BoR) to be made part of the revenue records, LDA officials said. LDA had completed all procedures to document housing schemes at its own end and submit it to the BOR. Officials said that the authority did not pursue cases of transfer of land with BoR to get them registered in its own name in the revenue record due to which the matter remained pending and caused several problems, they added.
Former LDA director general (DG) Omar Rasool took up the issue and a detailed summary was sent to the Lahore district officer (Revenue) for mutation of the LDA’s land in the revenue record.
Officials said that once the land would be transferred in name of LDA in the revenue record, cases of fraud and land grabbing would be eliminated. A senior LDA official told Pakistan Today that LDA had acquired millions of acres of land and established around 37 housing societies including LDA Avenue-1, Gulberg, Allama Iqbal Town, Johar Town, Jubilee Town, Gulshan-e-Ravi, Sabzazar, Samanabad, Gujjarpura, China Scheme, Egerton Road, Tajpura, Garden Town, Muslim Town, Mohlanwal, Quaid-e-Azam Town and Faisal Town during the last 35 years.
“Except for some plots in Tajpura, around 99 percent of land could not be documented and transferred in name of LDA and revenue record still showed names of various people as owners of the land,” he added. So much so, before formation of LDA, land acquired for Allama Iqbal Town during the Lahore Improvement Trust is yet to be transferred in name of LDA, he added.
LDA Additional DG Ahsanul Haq called a joint meeting of land acquisition collectors (LAC) and director (C & I) on Saturday to take stock of the delay. But the meeting could not be held because most of the LACs failed to turn up. He said it was not a formal meeting and had to oversee gravity of the problem.
Property experts said that the LDA constituted a security featured paper cell to issue security papers carrying all relevant documents, transfer letters, exemption letters, allotment letters and completion certificates.
They said that issuance of such papers aimed to check incidents of forgery, instances of sale of plots on fake transfer letters as well as claims of ownership by more than one claimant for the same property in order to safeguard precious properties of citizens from land mafia.
LDA claimed that security papers, which carried a life of more than 100 years, were neither available in market nor could be counterfeited.
In Pakistan, only the government’s printing press had the right to prepare and use such papers and it was almost impossible for the land mafia to reproduce such documents, experts said.
They disclosed that unless the land was not registered in LDA’s name, benefits of security features could never be reaped and passed on to the people.
