The forces have sought government permission for requisition of about 22,000 acres of land, a parliamentary body meeting was told yesterday.

The parliamentary standing committee on defence ministry in the meeting held at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban asked the ministry and the military land directorate to recover every square foot of military lands from the encroachers.

The Military Lands and Cantonment Directorate in the last three years recovered only 53 acres out of 923 acres of illegally occupied land from the grabbers in different parts of the country, the meeting was told.

According to the statistics submitted to the parliamentary body, the military land directorate has lost over 598 acres of land in Lalmonirhat district and 101 acres in Dhaka cantonment, said a meeting source.

Out of a total of 47,766 acres of military land across the country, Bangladesh Army alone holds 33,315 acres. Lately the armed forces division has proposed to the government for requisition of 20,874 acres of land for the army while about one thousand acres for navy and air force.

The parliamentary body yesterday discussed the ways to recover 112 acres of military land adjacent to Dhaka cantonment.

The military land directorate on several occasions initiated steps to retrieve the land that have been lost to the grabbers. But it could not succeed as people have already built houses, shops and other structures on those land.

"The situation is very complex and we are yet to take decision on how to recover those lands. We will discuss it again," Committee Chairman Mahbubur Rahman told reporters after the meeting.

"We discussed a proposition to open negotiations with the current dwellers who have built houses on the lands," the committee chairman added.

A meeting source quoting a senior army official said that the army headquarters once took steps to build shopping complexes on the lands on condition that 40 percent of those would be allocated among the grabbers. "But we could not press ahead with the plan as the government land cannot be bartered," he added.

Committee member and ruling BNP lawmaker Quamrul Islam told the meeting that over 40 thousand registered voters live on the grabbed land of Dhaka cantonment. "The local lawmaker does not dare to oust those people for fear of losing votes," the meeting source said quoting the former army official.

Besides, several cases are still pending over the ownership of the lands.

Due to shortage of time, the parliamentary body yesterday could not discuss the other military lands that have been appropriated by the encroachers in northern and eastern circles.

The parliamentary standing committee on defence ministry at yesterday's meeting expressed deep shock at the deaths of Lt Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora, commander of the joint forces during the Liberation War of 1971, and Nur Mohammad, a member of Bangladesh Armed Forces, killed in Congo.

It offered its sympathy for the bereaved family members of the both.