The Karachi division has over 9,00,212 acres land, out of which 60,000 acres of government land has been illegally occupied by some provincial and federal organisations, and housing authorities because there are around 6,81,000 acres non-surveyed land for which survey work has been started on war footing.
This was disclosed in a meeting held under the chairmanship of Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah at the CM House on Thursday. The meeting was attended by Principal Secretary Alamuddin Bullo and Member Board of Revenue Syed Zulfikar Shah.
The chief minister said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan had given some directions for computerisation of land record. “What the BoR has done so far,” he asked.
The Member BoR, Zulfikar Shah, said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan had directed that the land record of different dehs burnt during the martyrdom of Benazir Bhutto be verified at taluka level. “We have started verification work in three talukas – Jamshoro, Matiari and Tando Allahyar,” he said.
Zulfikar Shah explained through presentation that there were 6,000 dehs all over Sindh and record of 4,000 dehs had been computerised. Just after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the record of 870 dehs was burnt and so far the BoR had retrieved and computerised the record of 720 dehs, he said, adding that work on remaining 350 dehs was in progress.
Replying to a question of the chief minister, the BoR member said that the Karachi division had over 9,00,221 acres of land, out of which 6,81,000 acres was un-surveyed and 641,406 acres was surveyed land. “The illegal occupation always appears on the un-surveyed lands. This is why 60,000 acres land of Sindh government is under the illegal occupation of different provincial and federal housing and development authorities and agencies,” he said, adding that some of them were MDA, LDA, KPT and other housing authorities.
Replying to another question of the chief minister, the Member BoR said that 6,000 acres of government land had been illegally occupied by private people. “This shows that 60,000 acre government land has been grabbed by government agencies,” he said.
The chief minister directed the BoR to expedite the survey work so that illegally occupied government land could be retrieved. “I would not allow anybody to illegally occupy even a single inch of Sindh government land,” he said categorically.
Zulkfikar Shah said that the computerised record had been verified by tapedar, mukhtiarkar and then by the assistant commissioner. “This is the safest way of verification and computerisation.” The chief minister said that the Supreme Court had given observations that some fictitious entries were made in the record. At this Zulfikar Shah said that the khatidars had received over 6,000 certified copies of their record of rights from 27 services centers of the BoR established all over Sindh but not a single complaint of the factious record had been received so far.
The member BoR said that he had also computrised thousands of deh maps which reflected survey numbers along with a detailed map of the land, area and ownership. “We are going to launch them very soon because this process will take some time as most of the maps were damaged,” he said.
He showed different applications of the computerisation system to the chief minister on his laptop. The chief minister categorically directed the BoR to follow the directions of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in completion of computerisation work of land record.
