Villagers complain: Swat Expressway has devoured precious agricultural land

MARDAN: A number of residents of Bakhshali village have complained that the Swat Expressway project has devoured their precious agriculture land without getting properly and timely compensated.

It was learnt that Farid Gul Kaka, a resident of Bakhshali village in Mardan district, died last year of broken heart as he could not bear his ordeal of losing his precious 32 kanals agriculture land to the Swat Expressway.

Some individuals like Malik Jehanzeb Khan in the village have lost more than eight jareb (32 kanals) of land to the project.

Narrating his ordeal, Malik Jehanzeb said his mother had received substantial land-holding from her brothers as her share in her father’s property. He said in one place around five kanals of her fertile land was consumed by the project.

Another villager in Bakhshali village had sold his land for Rs31,000 per marla some four years ago. This was the market rate before anyone knew that the Swat Expressway would be built and would pass this way.

In Bakhshali and its surrounding villages, 600 kanals of land was acquired for the Swat Expressway. In the Shahbaz Garhi village, the land taken was around 1,000 kanals.

The locals said the land acquired from them was fertile and used for agricultural purposes. The price is estimated at Rs50,000 per marla as per the present market rates.

Yet whatever the rate the government had fixed, the land-owners haven’t been notified officially about it by the Revenue Department. Nobody in Bakhshali, Shahbaz Garhi, Narshak, Cham Dheri, and the rest of the villages has yet been paid or compensated for their land and crops.

The local Revenue Department officials never spoke to the owners when their land with standing crops was acquired and heavy machinery started the road construction activity without their consent.

In Mardan district, which is famous for fertile land and agricultural produce, the project consumed over 6,000 kanals of land. It is the most affected district in terms of agricultural land acquired for the project.

In most cases, these lands had been cultivated by the small farmers and the land owning gentry in the area for generations as these were their ancestral lands.

The government had claimed to have allocated Rs.18 billion for land requisition for the Swat Expressway, but those affected by the project said they were never compensated properly.

Some sources said that the money was transferred to District Revenue authorities concerned in Swabi and the affected families had already been paid but many have been left out in Mardan.