PAC and land Occupation

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), under the chairmanship of the Leader of the Opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, has directed the ministries of defence and interior to explain their position with respect to over 1000 acres of Pakistan Railways (PR) land in the possession of rangers and the army.
The process of law enforcement agencies, as well as the armed forces seeking possession of the land is well-established: permission to get possession is routed through the federal government that, in turn, seeks support from the provincial governments, given that the land is held by the provinces.
As the objective of the land is to provide a base for the rangers/army to enable them to more effectively carry out their functions that are explicitly related to security of the people and the country, a provincial government or indeed the federal government are unlikely to resist such a grant. The same objective applies to land grant for the establishment of cantonments, a source of major contention in Balochistan. The PAC noted that Railways failed to recover rental charges from Pakistan rangers and the army. Needless to add the PR, in turn, failed to meet its own financial obligations to the federal government for loans that it had procured.
This is not to argue that the PR financial performance has been stellar but to emphasise that the ugly spectre of inter-circular debt is not restricted to the power sector alone but is evident in other national institutions that, at the end of the day, compromises the ability of our institutions to pay off their debt to others, which in turn, leads to poor financials of all.
It is, therefore, critical for national institutions to clear off their debts. PR land referred to during the PAC inquiry, was in three distinct locations. First the 436 acres located in Haripur Band were handed over to the rangers in 1998 for forestry purposes and therefore not extended on lease. Second, 15 parcels of land measuring 525 acres in Shadra-Sangla hills and Jaranwala-Qila Sheikhupura were leased to the army for forestry.
It was then sub-leased to various parties for agricultural purposes. And finally, 210 kanals of land at Yazmin Mandi was occupied by rangers, out of which only 38 kanals were being utilised for service and training purposes and the rest was being utilised for commercial purposes.
The forestry sector of Pakistan is a major source of lumber, paper, fuelwood, latex, medicines as well as food. And while there is a need for afforestation in Pakistan, given that less than 4 percent of our land mass is forested, yet the critical question is: why are the rangers and the army engaged in this lucrative industry?
There is evidence to suggest that national institutions can work together for the benefit of the country. For example, the Pakistan army together with the forest department cultivated 3,000 jatropha plants given by Pakistan State Oil (PSO) on an experimental basis. However, in the case of the lands mentioned in the PAC inquiry no evidence of jointly working for a specific national goal came to light.
The land mafia in Pakistan is an ongoing issue and those engaged in this illegal activity range from national institutions to federal and provincial governments/departments to political parties (if the recent accusations hurled by many a party against its detractors is anything to go by), to gangs/individuals engaged in this lucrative activity that simply requires hiring the necessary muscle.
International donor agencies have been at pains to argue in favour of land reforms that must include computerisation of all land records. This proposal has been successfully resisted by those engaged in this activity to-date. To conclude, as with other aspects of the economy that require reforms, studies have identified the line of appropriate action that is required to set the system right. And similar to economic reforms, the process is stalled because of lack of interest by national institutions as well as the political leadership.