The sudden inspection of Urban Development Minister CP Singh to State Housing Board has given rise to the ray of hope among the disgruntled allotees of land plots and finished houses in Ranchi who were selected after a lottery system that was adopted for selecting a bunch of lucky owners of properties owned by the State-run-board.
After Saturday’s order against the board’s property still in control of Ranchi DC, allotees believe that the end of the ordeal could be just as far as the Minister’s interest remains on the issue.The matter is delaying since October, 2011 despite coming to the notice of bureaucracy and the Government, including top most functionaries in different Governments at the helm.
“I exhausted my retirement benefits and paid all amount at once but I am still waiting to get possession for my plot measuring 1601-sqft. I had sold my property elsewhere too to make payments. Neither the board is cancelling the lottery nor returning money. The situation has been as it is since 2011 but since the minister is talking about setting most of the things right I am sure he will pay attention to this as well,” said an allottee, Dinesh Prasad Sahu.
Sahu, who is an ex-serviceman of Indian Air Force, is not alone to have suffered due to administrative hurdles in the way of the execution of the scheme for which the Housing Board has invited applications in June 2011 for plots and flats at five locations including Ranchi. Even as the board did not stop the process of allotment to reach final stages at other locations—Dhanbad, Bokaro, Hazaribagh and Jamshedpur—Ranchi bore the brunt of loopholes in the system.
According to sources, the board is still collecting installments from allotees who opted for the facility to purchase property, however, there is no clarity as to whether they will get what they were supposed to after getting lucky in the lottery. The board despite controversies has not cancelled the allotment process. There about 283 allotees in Ranchi waiting for the board to deliver the properties.
Sources confided that the housing board has put allotments on hold after complaints made to the then Urban Development Secretary, Nitin Madan Kulkarni, about the opaqueness in the process of lottery which interestingly was also the process adopted at other places as well. To the chagrin of those who risked their investments and life-savings, allotment was made at other cities but not at Ranchi.
“We don’t know what happened where and who is sitting with the file. But we approached all in the Government upto to the highest level but the issue has been deliberately complicated by vested interests,” maintained Sahu. The lottery process was changed for the first time in 2011 and as against the earlier process in which two separate bucket of equal number of slips—one containing assets and other the names of applicant—were placed and one slip is drawn from each bucket to find out the luckiest applicant but in 2011, the process was changed and one bucket contained as many number of slips as the number of property whereas the other contained names of all applicants.
The change dragged the process in controversy. Sources disclosed that after complaints an inquiry committee was setup in 2012 that had given clean chit to the process but the matter got stuck over legality after remarks made by the then Advocate General during President’s Rule in Jharkhand. Meanwhile, Singh has assured to look into the matter and seek information on the matter. The minister said that he needs time to get into the bottom of matter before taking any steps further.
“I will have the matter inquired but first let me understand the whole issue,” said Singh. Incidentally, 191 plots and 277 flats have been made available for sale through lottery in three localities in Ranchi—Arogra, Harmu and Bariatu.