With Cabinet Secretary Sa'adat Husain as its chairman, the committee will recommend how to protect government and private land from grabbers, recover the occupied land and take legal and administrative action against offenders, according to a government handout.

Ten other members of the committee are secretaries of communications, home, land, local government, fisheries and livestock, environment and forest, housing and public works, expatriates welfare and overseas employment, shipping and law.

The land ministry will give secretarial support to the committee that has been asked to submit its report to the government by January 31, 2004 along with its recommendations.

The anti-land grab move came after Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's meeting with all secretaries on October 4, which underscored a quick halt to the fast depletion of government land, especially railway and riverside land.

The committee will also suggest streamlining the process of recovering land, identifying characteristics and working patterns of land grabbers and stern legal action against them.

A national committee is likely to be formed on the basis of the recommendations of the secretarial committee to deal with public and private land grabbers -- if need be -- by amending the existing or enacting tougher laws, sources said.

Officials said the issue of land-grab by a set of real estate companies and gangs figured high in a series of high-profile discussions of the government.

"Tougher action has to be taken against the land grabbers and illegal occupiers of property without fear. The prime minister gave an instruction for trying the land grabbers, if necessary, in special tribunals," a secretary said.