The alleged discrepancies in the data collected for the Haryana government’s flagship scheme of issuing property identity cards has “adversely affected” the lives of more than one crore people living in 88 cities of the state, Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala claimed on Friday. He also claimed that people are being forced to approach middlemen and pay bribes to officials to correct the discrepancies in their property IDs. Addressing a press conference here with senior Congress leaders Kumari Selja and Kiran Chowdhary, Surjewala alleged, “Property ID is not only a scam, but it has paralysed the lives of more than one crore Haryanvis living in 88 cities.”
The Congress leaders said a Rajasthan-based firm that had conducted a survey to make the property IDs had allegedly committed a large number of errors and people are now being forced to pay bribes to officials to rectify the errors. “This is a fake survey that has been conducted and it should be immediately scrapped…We demand an inquiry monitored by a high court judge into the entire thing,” said Kumari, flanked by five Congress MLAs from Haryana, including Chowdhary.
The discrepancies in the property IDs are related to various issues, such as change of names, addresses, mobile phone numbers, size of property, updation of dues, category of property etc., he said. Selja said the BJP-led Haryana government gave a tender to the Rajasthan-based company in 2019 for conducting the survey and put clauses like heavy penalties and even cancellation of the tender if there were flaws and the survey was not conducted correctly. However, the former Union Minister alleged, no action had been taken. A survey of 42.7 lakh properties has been conducted so far, she added. Surjewala claimed that there were several discrepancies in the survey, such as showing a sanctioned colony as unsanctioned and vice versa.
“If your plot or house is in a sanctioned colony, it has been shown to be in an unsanctioned one. To correct this, people are forced to run from pillar to post and even pay bribes to get it rectified. “In 88 cities, 42.7 lakh properties were surveyed, but 85 percent of those have discrepancies,” the Congress leader claimed. Chowdhary also claimed a monitoring committee was constituted for the project, but no monitoring was done. “We have raised the issue of an inquiry monitored by a high court judge because the BJP-JJP government has lost the mandate and support of people. They are only carrying on in the government purely on account of a constitutional tenure,” Surjewala said while replying to a reporter’s
question.
