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2,407 acres of rly land in West Zone under illegal occupation

Our Correspondent, Nilphamari
A staggering 2,407 acres of land under the West Zone of Bangladesh Railway (BR) is under the occupation of influential land grabbers while the railway ministry has hardly taken any concrete action in this regard after its formation as a separate entity in November last year.
There is 36,707 acres of land under two divisions of Western Zone — 25,507 acres in Pakshi Division and 11,000 acres in Lalmonirhat Division, said sources of the estate department of BR.
Most of the land is situated at Saidpur, Parbotipur, Khulna, Iswardi, Sirajganj, Lalmonirhat, Pakshi, and Gaibandha.
According to official documents, railway authorities in this zone are now using 15,181 acres (1 acre= 100 decimal) land for own purposes and there are rail stations, rail tracks, godowns and warehouses, workshops, rail hospitals, officers' and employees' quarters etc on that land.
Besides, 8,314 acres of land is leased as agricultural and commercial land to individuals.
Divisional Estate Officer of Pakshi Division Kiron Chandra Roy informed that influential people occupied 1957 acres of land under the division. In Lalmonirhat division, 450 acres of land has remained under illegal occupation. And so, the total area of occupied land in the West Zone stands at 2407 acres.
In large areas of the remaining land, there are houses, mosques, roads, educational institutions, playgrounds, haats and bazars, fallow lands, marshy lands etc for public use on which the railway has hardly any effective control.
Railway authorities' manpower shortage, lack of supervision and irregularities by a section of field level railway officials in the past are responsible for the situation, a railway official said, adding that the government is going to formulate a fresh policy to recover encroached rail land.
Several senior rail officials on condition of anonymity said the fresh policy might include an option to sell the encroached land, which has no use for railway, to encroachers concerned at good prices.
Sources said that the actual area of encroached railway land would be much larger than official estima-
tion of 2407 acres and the market value of encroached land is much higher than Tk 1,000 crore as a good portion of the occupied railway land is in big towns, where per bigha (1 bigha= 30 decimal) is valued at Tk 4-5 crore.
The encroachers have built unauthorised large business establishments, big factories, multi-storied markets, high-rise residential houses and others. They earn huge amounts of money every month by renting them or handing over the possession.
Several trade union leaders of big labour organizations backed by the ruling Awami League and the main opposition BNP are directly
or indirectly involved in dealing with railway land and rail quarters, sources said. In most railway towns, large trade union offices have been built on the encroached railway land.
The country's biggest railway workshop is situated at Saidpur and there are 2488 rail quarters for rail employees here, officials concerned said. But 1470 of the quarters are under illegal occupation, they said.
"Saidpur municipality authorities occupied 25.75 acres of railway land in Saidpur town long ago and they are allowing illegal encroachers to build multistoried residential and commercial buildings, markets,
banks, insurance companies, hotels on the rail land," Abu Yousuf Md Shamim, assistant engineer of the estate department of Bangladesh Railway in Saidpur, alleged.
To get back the land, BR authorities filed a case and got court verdict in their favour, but still they could not exercise any authority over the land as they have acute manpower shortage, he added.
In many cases after recovery of encroached railway land, it went into the hand of illegal occupiers again due to lack of proper maintenance, said Asadul Haque, divisional estate officer of Lalmonirhat Division.