After the cataclysmic events of post-tribal attack era, many people migrated from Jammu to Pakistan or PoK leaving behind their immoveable properties, houses, shops, godowns, and lands. The State Government took hold of these abandoned properties fearing that land and property mafia would grab it. A new department called Custodian Department was created to take all these properties into custody, make proper inventory of these properties and handle them in accordance with the needs and practices prevalent elsewhere.
These are huge properties. Residential houses have been given on rent or lease for a longer period and same is the case with the patches of lands. But unfortunately land and property grabbing mafia has laid hands on them and encroached upon the lands. With the passage of time it has become difficult for the Government to continue to make desirable maintenance and renovation of these properties. The Minister in charge, therefore, has constituted a committee of experts to suggest measures for putting the idle evacuee properties to commercial use to increase the revenue of the Custodian Department and to prevent its encroachment. It was further decided that the committee would comprise experts from horticulture, business management and marketing fields to recommend measures for productive utilization of properties especially horticulture land. It was asked to advise the Government about the optimum utilization of the assets (land and buildings) of the Evacuee Property Department; development of valuable units/projects on the vacant land/sites and financial viability of the projects so proposed.
However it is surprising that since the time it was constituted, the Financial Commissioner Planning, Development and Monitoring Department has failed to convene even one meeting of the committee till date despite the fact that this issue has been raised in several meetings by the Minister for Revenue, Relief and Rehabilitation since April this year.
The bottleneck appears to be somewhere at the level of bureaucracy. We would like that the bottlenecks are removed and the meeting of the committee is called to finalize a report so that the Department is able to take definite action leading to converting the Evacuee Property into productive source.
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