The Government and other concerned agencies dealing with the entire gamut of identified land for housing colonies must come clean and not only show the requisite quantum of transparency but should look too like that. How can it be explained that whenever the issues like the one under consideration crop up , the concerned bureaucrats , of course with some exception, start thinking and rather actively working on it as to how the same could be irregularly milked to derive undesirable benefits or find ways to manage showering favours on the selected few favourites . People not only smell a rat in allotments of plots but the hopes of the deserved and most eligible ones come a cropper . The bane of most of the administrative ills is the absence of various uniform, transparent and clean policies and yard sticks . Had that not been the case , in implementation, there would remain no scope or any margin to indulge in any irregularity.
Why should the designated panel of bureaucrats be at all showing reticence and suspenseful taciturnity in framing uniform policy regarding plots and various issues connected thereto in the housing colonies developed by the Government in Jammu and Srinagar ? It may be recalled that in November 2019, a committee of officers was constituted with intent to frame policy for settling pending cases of the plots in the housing colonies developed by the Government. Are rooms and spaces being created to have smooth sail for according favouritism and therefore indulge in irregularities? Why should these bureaucrats not discipline themselves into a fixed time frame to come out with a clean and unambiguous policy and how can they enforce guidelines and rules whilst issuing circulars and official memos for compliance by junior level staff as, what matters is whether the concerned bureaucrat carried the tag of probity and transparency in dealings .
Any inordinate but wilful delay or developing the mindset of dragging on in the process of taking a decision and framing a cogent and transparent policy, not only promotes breeding of corruption and inefficiency but a system failure when seen in totality . What should matter the most is that the public is watching all this with suspicion , concern and even indignation. We know better about the nuts and bolts of such dealings in the past because of the same lacunae in the Jammu and Kashmir Housing Board , Jammu Development Authority , Srinagar Development Authority , Jammu Municipal Corporation and Srinagar Municipal Corporation and about the manner and the style of adopting different yard sticks. Honesty and straight forwardness have, very often, remained at the back burner and allegations are that money had been changing hands to obtain favours illegally.
The areas where bungling often takes place against ‘consideration’ are status from lease to free hold, building permission, change of land use and allotment of strips to the adjoining plot holders and other connected matters. It is not that in the past, the elected governments were not aware of all these irregularities but they were choosing rather believing in no interference or not encouraging any implementation of a uniform policy, all for obvious reasons . The said constituted committee has wilfully failed in meeting the deadline fixed by the Principal secretary , Housing and Urban Development Department and none of the issues about which the Committee had the brief, have been addressed as if the matter was so complicated and complex besides voluminous, that still some more unspecified time was needed by them. With this type of response , issues like fate of un-allotted vacant plots, action on transfer of possession of plots, exchange without registration, transfer of ownership of plots on succession, , allotment of strips , encroachment of areas by adjoining plot holders and numerous others continue to remain hanging in balance. The culture of “Sahib on tour” and hence no work as no one would sign the papers and ” no policy yet framed by Sahibs” and nothing can be done type of royalties, unfortunately, still continue to have their writ large in the administrative set up of Jammu and Kashmir. The Lieutenant Governor needs to break that vicious circle and call for the result card of each bureaucrat for the work assigned to introduce and implement transparency . In the meantime , please ensure to stop adopting different yardsticks for dealing with the issues like the one under reference.
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