Nagpur: 68 families fight for land pattas for 10 years, denied RTI answers
68 families in Nagpur's Indiranagar settlement, denied land pattas for a decade, take their RTI complaint to the state information commission
Sixty-eight families living in the Indiranagar settlement in the Jaripatka area of Nagpur district have been fighting for years for pattas, or ownership rights, to their land. Their struggle for this basic right has continued for years.
Despite repeatedly approaching the concerned administrative departments, the families have not received a satisfactory response, and their effort has continued without let-up for the last 14 months. After the departments concerned failed to provide the documents sought under the Right to Information Act (RTI), the matter has now reached the Nagpur bench of the State Information Commission.
The Indiranagar settlement falls under slum code 410 in survey number 25/1 at Mouza Indora. In 2014, a scheme for 366 SRA houses was sanctioned here under the BSUP scheme. However, according to Sonu Khobragade, secretary of the Indiranagar Housing Cooperative Society, discrepancies that arose in the documents after 2016 have left 68 families without their pattas to this day. In other words, even though the scheme for 366 houses was sanctioned, the rights of these families have remained stuck for as long as 10 years.
Society secretary Sonu Khobragade had filed an RTI application to obtain a certified map of the Indiranagar settlement in Jaripatka, but alleged that different departments of the municipal corporation kept passing responsibility to one another. He said information related to the map is available with the town planning department, but the matter was diverted to the slum department, which, he said, never gave clear information as expected.
The society has alleged that even after the State Information Commission issued summonses, the officials concerned did not appear for the hearing. It has demanded strict action against the negligent officials concerned for keeping poor families deprived of their pattas for 10 years and for contradictions between their oral and written responses.
A hearing in the matter has been fixed for September 28 before the Nagpur bench of the State Information Commission. The commission has made it mandatory for all four officials connected with the case to be present. Secretary Sonu Khobragade and the affected families have warned that if they do not get justice at this hearing too, they will launch an intense agitation.
