BoR looks into plaints about bribe in land transfer cases.

LAHORE -- The Punjab Board of Revenue (BoR) has sought a report from the Lahore deputy commissioner (DC) into transfer cases of over 100 intermitted properties on complaints that patwaris in five tehsils of Lahore minted bribes from citizens for transferring intermitted mutations. The tehsils include Cantonment, Raiwind, Shalimar, City and Model Town.

An official said the issue surfaced at a time when the BoR reportedly revived the old Patwar system by almost abolishing the computerization of land records and posted land revenue officials at the recently launched Dehi Marakaz-i-Maal (rural revenue centres), also called Satellite Arazi Record Centres.

In Aug last, the Punjab revenue minister announced the recruitment of 5,000 patwaris across the province for the marakiz.

Earlier, the Punjab Land Record Management and Information System (LRMIS) was in place with a tier-3 data centre for computerized land records at the Arfa Kareem Technology Park, Lahore.

The computerisation of land records aimed at abolishing the monopoly of patwaris, forgery of documents and corruption/bribe.

The official said recently numerous complaints of bribes again started surfacing.

About the fresh complaints, he said, the patwaris of the...