The New Nation - Internet Edition

EVEN the present military-backed interim government under state of emergency could not reclaim more than 50 acres out of the 2,500 acres of occupied railway land from grabbers during its more than one and a half years of rule, as reported by media recently. Soon after this government took charge, the taskforce launched 'a massive drive' to recover the occupied government land as part of its crusade against corruption. But most of the railway lands are still occupied illegally by many grabbers across the country and the Railway Department is in helpless condition and finds it difficult to go ahead with development programmes.

So far no fresh initiative has yet been taken by the authorities to recover the grabbed land. As is widely known to all how nexus is formed with gangsters in connivance with local influential people having political clout and those who are in the administration including law enforcing agencies for grabbing government land belonging to different departments and ministries. Similarly, armed hoodlums and a section of railway employees and workers have been occupying railway land for a long time though attempts were made many a time to recover those.

Much of whatever land the railway authorities recovered was reoccupied by the grabbers because of their clout. In the capital, many of the slums are along the railway tracks occupied by the grabbers rented out to helpless poor and uprooted people coming from the rural areas. These illegal occupants at Kawranbazar, Kamalapur, Mohakhali, Banani, Tejgaon and Khilgaon have rented out the lands to others for use as kitchen markets, makeshift shops, tea-stalls, rickshaw-stands and business establishments. Non-recovery of the occupied lands has led to huge loss amounting to about Tk 400 crore annually to the state-owned Railway, according to the media.