The Federal Investigation Agency’s probe into the Reni Canal project, a land scam in which some officials and politically influential people got hundreds of acres of state land transferred in their name on forged documents, has recommended legal action against three officials of the Revenue Department and over 50 other people, The News learnt on Tuesday. The scam caused the provincial exchequer a lot of money and increased the cost of the Wapda-funded, multi-purpose project, which would irrigate thousands of acres of land besides providing potable water to the people up to Thar.
The Sindh government, instead of moving against the officials concerned, has recently appointed one of the officials involved in the scam as a consultant in the Revenue Department in Sukkur after his retirement, official sources told The News. The Reni Canal, for which Rs11 billion have been spent so far since work started on it in 2003, hit controversy recently, prompting the federal government to order an inquiry into the land scam. Official sources said that around 7,000 acres of land was required for the Reni Canal. It was estimated that most of the land was official, but certain revenue officials got these state lands transferred in the name of some private people and made payment to them.
One official sharing contents of the inquiry report said that around Rs1 billion had been paid for these lands. The canal is spread from Guddu to Ghotki. Most of the land belonged to Deh Sekaro in Ghotki district, which got transferred in the name of some private people on fake documents. The land was transferred despite the fact that the then president, Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf had imposed a ban on it in 2004.
The Mukhtiarkar Estate Ghotki and the DO of Revenue and Estate Ghotki were involved in the transfer of official land to the private people while the DDO of Revenue Obauvro made payments to them. The DO of Revenue, Ghotki, retired in 2001, but he was appointed as a consultant revenue officer in Sukkur recently, an official said. A private firm, Techno Consultant, had conducted a survey and submitted that 75 percent of land for Reni Canal was official land, but the said officials showed 100 percent land as owned by some private people.
