Discrepancies in property IDs affecting lives of over 1 crore Haryanvis: Surjewala

Chandigarh, Jul 28 (PTI) 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 Choudhary, 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 Selja, who was flanked by five Congress MLAs from Haryana, including Choudhary.

Surjewala said more than one crore people living in 88 cities, involving 11 municipal corporations, 23 municipal councils and 54 municipal committees, are affected due to the scheme and have been running from pillar to post for months to get the data of their property IDs corrected.

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 penalty and even cancellation of the tender if there were flaws and the survey was not conducted correctly.

“However, despite the fact that the chief minister has admitted earlier that eight lakh discrepancies were found out of the total surveyed properties, no action has been taken against the firm,” the former Union minister said.

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.

“Some properties have been shown in other people’s names. At some places, tenants have been shown as owners. For multiple houses, a single property ID has been shown. The area and property size also has anomalies. Residential houses have been shown as commercial while commercial shops have been shown as residential properties,” he said.

Surjewala said as a result of these discrepancies, people are not getting no-objection certificates (NOCs) for their properties nor are they able to register a property or lease it out, avail bank loans, inherit or pay property tax.

“On August 13, 2019, an agreement was made between the government and the company, which was supposed to complete the survey work in four months. Despite 10 extensions, the work of the property survey has not been completed.

“In 88 cities, 42.7 lakh properties were surveyed, but 85 per cent of those have discrepancies,” the Congress leader claimed.

Choudhary said a monitoring committee was constituted for the project, but no monitoring was done.

“I had raised the issue in the Assembly as well and the chief minister had admitted that there were anomalies, which were being investigated. But nothing has been done yet,” she said.

Selja said the tender given to the company should be cancelled, the amount of Rs 60 crore paid to it should be recovered, penalty should be imposed on the firm and it should be blacklisted.

“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.

The Haryana government has introduced property IDs to ensure transparency in sale or purchase.