• Ministry says unauthorised possession by departments being regularised through leases
• Pakistan Railways generated Rs13.9bn from leasing, licensing of land in 3 years
ISLAMABAD: As much as 3,999 acres of land, belonging to the Pakistan Railways (PR), is currently under “illegal occupation” of various “government and defence departments”.
This information was placed before the National Assembly by Minister for Railways Hanif Abbasi on Monday, through written replies to two separate, but similar questions posed by MNAs.
“The PR owns a total of 168,858 acres of land across its network in Pakistan, out of which 13,115 acres (7.7 per cent) is under illegal occupation,” said the minister.
In the past five years, PR has managed to retrieve over 2,550 acres of land from illegal occupants. However, the replies have no mention about the retrieval of land from the government and defence departments.
The minister was responding to separate questions asked by PPP’s Shazia Marri and Sher Afzal Marwat of the opposition PTI.
The minister had been asked to provide the “names of individuals, entities, or organisations currently occupying railways land illegally, with specific locations and extent of each encroachment”.
Besides this, the minister had also been asked to provide a “province-wise break-up of the encroached land as well as the area of the illegally occupied land retrieved by the PR during the last five years”.
The response categorised the occupying individuals or departments into different categories, including “agricultural, commercial, residential, and government/defence departments”.
It says that the largest area of 4,773 acres is under illegal occupation of the individuals or departments related to agriculture, followed by 3,999 acres by the “government/defence departments”.
Moreover, the reply shows that a total of 3,266 acres are under residential use and 712 acres of illegal land is in commercial use.
The government/defence departments have been illegally occupying 2,539 acres in Punjab, 764 acres in Sindh, 349 acres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 347 acres in Balochistan.
Similarly, the province-wise data of the total land under illegal occupation shows that 5,717 acres are under illegal occupation in Punjab, followed by Sindh (5,590 acres), Balochistan (1,033 acres) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (775 acres).
According to Mr Abbasi, the PR has been successful in retrieving 1,078 acres from the possession of illegal occupants in Punjab and 837 acres in Sindh during the last five years. Moreover, it has retrieved 419 acres in Balochistan and 218 acres in KP.
The reply, however, shows that when the PR has been successful in getting back some of its encroached land from the possession of individuals and organisations using it for residential, agricultural or commercial use, it has not retrieved even a single acre from the “government/defence departments” in the past five years.
The PR has retrieved 1,594 acres of land which was under agricultural use, 713 acres under commercial use and 268 acres under residential use.
The minister said the PR administration had undertaken several measures over the last three years to retrieve its illegally-occupied land.
“Unauthorised possession of railway land by government departments are being regularised through leases under Railway land policy,” said the minister, adding that commercial encroachments are being reviewed under “Remedial Policy” through lease agreements involving upfront premiums and arrears.
He said any illegal occupation or encroachment was dealt with legal action as per rules and regulations and regular anti-encroachment operations were being carried out to prevent fresh encroachments.
From 2020 to June 2025, he said, a total of 5,182 encroachment cases were reported, with a challan rate of 99.58pc and a conviction rate of 96.71pc.
Out of 5,611 accused, 99.6pc belonged to the general public, with nearly all arrested and only 20 still at large.
He said the PR had launched a comprehensive anti-encroachment campaign in collaboration with provincial government authorities.
The minister claimed that no new encroachment on the PR land had been recorded in the past five years.
Mr Abbasi said the PR had generated a total revenue of Rs13.9 billion from the leasing and licensing of railway land over the last three financial years.
Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2025