Title - Notice slapped on Railways for ‘illegal possession’ of govt land

Ferozepur:
The district administration has slapped a legal notice against the Northern Railways for alleged unauthorised possession of government land measuring over 91 kanals in Ghulam Hussainwala village and 9 kanals in Bareke village along the Indo-Pakistan border.In the notice, the Revenue Department has asked the Railways to hand over the possession of said land back to the state government and also pay a penalty against its illegal occupation. This chunk of the land situated in Gulam Hussainiwala bears immense significance for the railways as the Ferozepur-Lahore rail track, which today stands terminated short of the twin canals near Hussainiwala, is situated on it.Ironically, the district administration and the local military authorities had earlier been approaching the railway authorities to grant permission to use a portion of this land for the construction of a road overbridge (ROB) near the twin canals believing that the land belonged to the railways. "However, when the administration checked its revenue records, it was found that the land belonged to the state government and not the railways," said Border Road Organisation (BRO) officials who had been moving from pillar to post to get permission to use a portion of this land for the ROB.

As per the information, after the completion of 15 days notice to the railways for filing a reply, Deputy Commissioner Manjit Singh Narang has now given the go ahead to the BRO to resume construction.

"In this era of satellite imagery, the construction of the bridge which was sanctioned a long time back, assumed great strategic significance for the armed forces from the operational point of view," said defence officials, adding that it was unfortunate that such an important project got delayed inordinately over the status of ownership of land for more than two years.

Earlier, railway officials had maintained that since an old track existed on this land, therefore, if the land was given to the Army for the construction of a bridge, any possibility of extending the railway track towards Pakistan in case of reopening of this border, will not be feasible in future.