176 acres of govt land freed of encroachments: Punjab minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

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Chandigarh, May 24

Rural Development and Panchayat Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal today got vacated 176 acres of panchayat land of Fatehgarh village of the Majri block in Mohali district from illegal encroachments.

The market value of this land is Rs 264 crore. This land was illegally encroached upon by nine persons. He said no action would be taken if the people who had illegally encroached upon panchayat land vacate it by May 31.

Highlighting that Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had already announced that the state government was committed to freeing the land from encroachments, Dhaliwal said even the affluent people who had occupied government land would not be spared.

In the second phase, 761 acres of government land had been freed from encroachment so far, Dhaliwal said. He further said the state government’s target was to vacate 6,000 acres of land by June 10 this year.

Dhaliwal said last year 9,030 acres of land was freed from encroachment, the average market value of this land is around Rs 2,709 crore.

Appealing to people to vacate encroached government land, he said with this step, the revenue collected from the land could be used for welfare of Punjab.

The minister said encroached land was not the ancestral property of anyone, but it was the common land of all Punjabis residing in the state.