A total of 12,195 acres of land worth Tk 2,554 crore have so far been recovered from the grabbers in 64 districts since the drive started, the national executive committee for recovering grabbed land headed by the cabinet secretary recently disclosed at a meeting.

Around 20 lakh acres of land are still in the possession of encroachers because of negligence of the previous BNP-led coalition government and its departments concerned, sources said.

The land ministry has been gathering information on recovered land in different districts since February, sources said, adding that the ministry officials do not know if it will be possible to recover all the pieces of grabbed land across the country.

Senior officials at the land ministry blamed a chronic lack of coordination among the government, municipal authorities and other organisations and agencies for not being able to detect and recover the grabbed land.

Talking to The Daily Star yesterday, Land Secretary Lutfar Rahman Talukder said it is true that the drive to recover land from grabbers gained pace this January. But the drive is still facing difficulties at some places due to legal complexities, Lutfar, also a member of the national executive committee, added.

The land ministry, however, has no specific figures on how much of that land and property it actually retains control over and how much it has lost to grabbers, encroachers and squatters.

Isolated data available with various government bodies and agencies suggest that the amount of public land now in grabbers' hand is no less than 20 lakh acres. The figure is, however, much more--over 30 lakh acres, according to some studies.

Incident of land grabbing is higher in the metropolises than elsewhere, obviously due to higher level of price and value.

In Dhaka and its environs, grabbers actually far outweigh the government in terms of possession of public land. Against the 4-lakh acres of public land they occupy, the government controls only 1 lakh acre, according to reports of the district administration officials quoted by the parliamentary standing committee on land ministry on December 28, 2003.

Land Secretary Lutfar yesterday said the estimate of grabbed land is ever changing.

He expressed his optimism about the ongoing drive to recover land from the grabbers. "It has now become possible to demolish any illegal establishment, but it was totally impossible a few months ago," he said.

There is controversy surrounding how much khas land the country has and how much of it has been gobbled up.

The land ministry, the parliamentary standing committee on it and study reports cited different figures during the rule of the BNP-led alliance government.

The then land minister M Shamsul Islam told the Jatiya Sangsad (JS) in 2003 that there are only over 6 lakh acres of khas land in the country, but the parliamentary standing committee contradicted him quoting reports available from 53 districts in 2004 and said the government has 10 lakh acres of khas land.

Later, the parliamentary body disclosed that the total khas land amounts to about 14 lakh acres, of which over 5 lakh acres had been encroached on.

But a study conducted by Dhaka University professor of economics Abul Barakat put the figure of grabbed khas land at more than 10 lakh acres.

According to the study, the government holds 33 lakh acre khas land, of which more than 8 lakh acres are farmland, 17 lakh acres non-farmland and over 8 lakh acres water bodies.

The report said all the khas non-farmland and water bodies are illegally occupied and the government has lost control of 88 percent of the farmland it distributed among the poor in the last 20 years.

According to a land ministry report submitted to a JS body on October 13, 2004, grabbers have gobbled up 4,45,726 acres or more than two-thirds of 6,43,140 acres of vested property in the country.

But Barakat's study claimed that the government is the custodian of 21 lakh acres of vested property, over 90 percent of which is now in the possession of grabbers.

At least 7 lakh acres from 9 lakh acres of Waqf estates is in illegal possession, the religious affairs ministry reported to its parliamentary standing committee in July 2003. The JS body asked the ministry to take action against the grabbers.

The forest department in a report placed at a parliamentary body in 2005 said it has lost some 12,000 acres of forestland in Gazipur and Savar to encroachers.

There are 64,750 acres of forestland in Gazipur and Dhaka and grabbers occupied some 11,400 acres of the 63,815-acre forestland in Gazipur and 600 acres of the 934 acres in Savar, said the report.

Besides, according to various government reports, over 50,000 acres of land under government departments and agencies including the roads and highways, railway and shipping ministry have been grabbed or encroached on.