Under a campaign to get rid of illegal possessions and identify the ‘Shamlat’ land (village common land), Punjab government has so far identified 26,300 acres of cultivable panchayat land, which was not owned by the panchayats, worth about Rs 9200 Crore.

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Rural Development and Panchayat Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal said that a special Shamlat Cell was established by his department to thoroughly examine all the records of Revenue Department related to Shamlat lands across the state.

He said that so far, the work of comparing the records with the Revenue Department record out of 153 blocks has been completed in 86 blocks to identify such Shamlat land, which is not under the possession or in the record of Panchayats.

The Minister said that during this investigation, the department has identified 26,300 acres of cultivable panchayat land, which was not owned by the panchayats.

Terming it as a great achievement of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann led Punjab government, Dhaliwal lashed out at the previous governments and said that none of them had ever bothered to identify or take care of Shamlat land.

He said that officials of the department have been directed to complete the identification of such Shamlat land in the remaining blocks by December 2023. Besides this, he said that the records of the Shamlat land were being uploaded on the website of the department.

The Rural Development Minister has issued a WhatsApp number and has appealed to all the citizens of Punjab to send complaints or information regarding illegal occupation of Shamlat land on WhatsApp number 9115116262. He also said that the identity of the informer will be kept confidential.

Dhaliwal said that during the first phase of the government’s campaign to get rid of illegal encroachment on land, a total of 9126 acres of land has been vacated from the illegal occupants.

Following the appeal of Chief Minister Mann, people have come forward willingly and handed over about 3435 acres of Shamlat land to the village panchayats.

Dhaliwal announced that the vacated Shamlat land would be handed over to the panchayats which would be used for development works by them. The land, which is cultivable, would be given on annual lease and non-cultivable land would be used for plantation to preserve our environment, he added.