LAHORE - With the cash-strapped Punjab Government failing to provide required fund, the City District Government Lahore and District Government Sheikhupura have stopped the process of acquiring land for Ravi National Park, TheNation has learnt on Wednesday. Both the districts were acquiring land along River Ravi for the Punjab Forest Department to establish much hyped environment friendly project, covering over 1.2 million kanal land, from Narang Mandi (Sheikupura) to Maraka (Lahore). According to the officials, the CDGL has identified 4,75,000 kanal land along River Ravi and started acquisition process. About a couple of weeks back, the CDGL asked Punjab Forest Department to release initial amount of around Rs 1 million for publication of details of land in Gazette. Lack of response from the Punjab Forest Department left no other option for the CDGL except to stop the land acquisition process. It is learnt that the same thing happened with Sheikhupura district, thus putting the much-hyped Ravi National Park project in the back burner. According to the officials, the Punjab Government has stopped working on the project for the time being and diverted available funds for relief and rehabilitation activities in flood hit areas. They, however, expressed hope that the land acquisition process would be started at a later stage. They said development projects in the province have been shelved and all available resources were diverted to top priority area of relief and rehabilitation activities in flood-affected areas. As part of Ravi National Park project, the Punjab Government planned to construct a lake for maintaining rapidly decreasing ground water level besides establishing a recreational park of international standard to provide healthy and pollution free atmosphere to the citizens.