The Janta Darbar which is being held every Monday at the office of the Dehradun District Magistrate along with the rest of the State was cancelled this Monday, making many, who came from far-off places from across the district with petitions to be presented to the DM, to return disappointed. Why the public grievance hearing was cancelled this way-the first since such meetings started some months ago-was not clear. An officer, however, ascribed the cancellation to the DM being busy with the court-ordered demolition drive, an explanation which failed to satisfy the large number of people who thronged the venue to present their grievances right to the DM while hoping their prompt redressal.
Things are surprising as the DM S A Murugeshan has been very particular about such public hearings from the start. There are even instances of the DM publicly abusing some officers for giving such ‘important’ meetings a miss.
Many people, hailing from the remote hill areas of the district, turned up at the right time to attend the hearing and present their hardships to the DM. They looked utterly disappointed when they found the cancellation notice pasted on the notice board of the DM’s office. Some of them kept waiting, hoping against hope that the DM would finally turn up to hear out their grievances. But the hope remained elusive.
Venting their despair over the sudden cancellation of the public hearing, one Jaipal Singh Chauhan from a remote village located in the Chakrata region, said that the cancellation was a real shock for them. “It has been for close to 14 months we have been wandering with our grievance from office to office. With nothing happening, we have travelled around 200 kms from the remote village Kharsi in Chakrota and reached here with a hope of our problem being heard out by the DM. You can realise the shock we got when the officer here told us about the cancelation of the public hearing,” he said.
Around 15 people from the same village were found waiting patiently outside the DM office for hours. Asked about the problem they have come with, one of them said that it was against the head of their village. “He has embezzled funds meant for development of our village. Things have been going on since 201,4 but nothing has been done so far,” he added.
Virendra Singh Panwar, another member from the village, said, “We are poor farmers and we have come here from a far-off place. Now we are returning empty-handed,” he said.
The petitions filed for the public hearing were mostly about broken roads due to the laying of pipelines, water scarcity, land dispute, overflowing drains and the drying–up Rispana.
Quizzed over why the public hearing was cancelled, an officer present there said that it was due to the DM being busy at some meeting regarding the anti-encroachment drive in the city. “He is now at the camp office as the meeting is being held there. We received the update late,” he said.