The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), in collaboration with the Punjab Board of Revenue (BoR), has recovered 25,444 kanal of state land worth Rs. 433 billion from illegal occupation across Punjab.
The announcement was made by NAB Lahore Director General Mirza Faran Baig and Senior Member Board of Revenue Nabeel Javed during a press conference on Friday.
According to the officials, the recovery was made through field enforcement, verification of revenue records, demarcation exercises, and coordinated action with district administrations. The reclaimed land includes high-value agricultural and commercial property in multiple districts and has been restored to state ownership.
NAB Lahore DG said the operation marked a major enforcement milestone in protecting public property and state resources. He added that the recovery reflected an unprecedented level of coordination between NAB Lahore and the Punjab BoR.
He said the campaign had helped establish a strong enforcement framework for reclaiming encroached state land and restoring lawful control over public assets through accountability and administrative action.
The Punjab government has also constituted a joint task force to retrieve state land from illegal possession and develop a transparent model for its lawful disposal in collaboration with the BoR. The task force is pursuing encroachments and ensuring that all recovered land is disposed of through documented and auditable procedures.
Both NAB and BoR urged citizens to support the task force by reporting illegal occupation of state land through the official Complaint Management Portal.
The NAB Lahore DG said that after the success of the Punjab model, a similar task force had already been established in Sindh, while the process of constituting one in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was underway.
He further said that in several cases, illegal occupation of state land had been facilitated through the misuse of apparently legitimate documentation. Investigations had also uncovered the involvement of certain revenue officials in facilitating encroachments on public land.
According to him, the identified officials and private individuals will be proceeded against in accordance with the law. He emphasized that NAB’s objective is not limited to land recovery but also includes action against the wider network of land grabbers and their facilitators.
The NAB Lahore DG also said that NAB secured record recoveries of Rs. 15.6 trillion between 2023 and 2026. During 2025 alone, NAB facilitated the return of Rs180 billion to more than 115,000 affectees.
He added that NAB Lahore secured recoveries worth Rs. 263.096 billion during 2025 and distributed recovered amounts among 61,700 claimants.
NAB Lahore is currently investigating several large-scale public fraud cases involving 81,090 affectees, with estimated financial losses of Rs. 124 billion.
