GUJRAT, Nov 26: The Punjab government has made a plan to develop a Safari park in the Rakh Pabbi Sarkar forest area along both sides of GT Road in Kharian and Sara-i-Alamgir tehsils and a survey of the area is under way.

Sources told Dawn work on the proposal of converting Rakh Pabbi into a Safari park had been discussed by the Punjab government and two ruling party legislators from the area, Chaudhry Abid Raza Kotla (NA-107) and Chaudhry Jaafar Iqbal (NA-106) had been engaged in the project.

The total area of the Rakh Pabbi forest is around 38,874 acres while the elevation of its hills varies from 982 to 1,358 feet above the sea level and they are a part of Himalayan foothills. It stretches out to Mandi Bahauddin since 827 acres of the total area are the part of the tehsil.

In 1879, the Rakh Pabbi was declared a reserved forest. It is pertinent to mention that a huge part of the area is locally known as Jabba, said to be notorious for harbouring hardened criminals.

Currently, some 2,500 acres of the Rakh Pabbi land is under control of the army as per the approval of the Board of Revenue whereas its 350 acres have been in occupation of a local family since 1949 and the district revenue department has been in litigation process with the occupants for more than the last five decades.

In the last two decades, there was a demand by the overseas Pakistanis, belonging to Kharian and Sara-i-Alamgir tehsils, to declare the area as industrial zone or establish a new city project for them. They had also offered investment on their own for any of the aforementioned proposals but they got no response from the government.

PML-N leader Hamza Shahbaz recently took interest in developing the Pabbi site into a Safari park on the pattern of the African Safaris after which the progress on the project was being made. A South Africa-based company was approached by the government to work on the feasibility of the project besides taking responsibility for developing a Safari park.

It is learnt that MNA Chaudhry Abid Raza Kotla has been tasked with negotiating with the companies interested in the project and he has paid a special visit to South Africa regarding the project a few months back.