Owners from Gilgit-Baltistan reluctant to surrender land for CPEC

Some land owners have filed a complaint before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif against the forced acquisition of the land they inherited for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project by the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) administration.

The land in question, which is surrounded by the Himalayas and the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, has been selected for the Special Economic Zone of CPEC.

According to the Dawn, the complaint filed by Shah Jehan Mushapa and other residents of the Maqpon Das Village in the Denyuore tehsil in Gilgit says that the GB bureaucracy had in order to please their rival tribe forcibly acquired their land, which had been under their possession for generations.

According to the complaint, the locals were given rights of the land in 1893. It says the GB administration had recently selected Maqpon Das for the CPEC and acquired the land free of cost.

The complainants say they are not against the CPEC project but the way the GB administration has acquired their land is unlawful and unacceptable.