Estates Deptt’s commercial units worth billions of rupees under illegal occupation

Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Apr 7: A number of commercial units of the Estates Department worth billions of rupees have been under illegal occupation of the certain businessmen in both the capital cities of the State while as huge funds are being spent lavishly on un-necessary renovations.
These revelations have been made by Committee on Estimates of the Legislative Assembly in its latest report. “The information furnished by the department was completely silent on the allotment of commercial infrastructure, norms adopted for allotment of such properties and the revenue generated through this process annually”, the Commission said.
The Estates Department has around 170 commercial units in Jammu and nearly 200 in Srinagar cities. In Jammu, the commercial units are situated at Panjtirthi, Gole Market Gandhi Nagar, Bikram Chowk, opposite Convent School and near Green Belt Park while as in Srinagar such units are situated at Residency Road, Lal Chowk, Polo View and Press Enclave areas.
“A number of commercial units, worth billions of rupees, were under illegal occupation of certain businessmen at Jammu and Srinagar but the department has not initiated steps to restore the same”, the Committee said, adding “the department should take steps for their restoration and proper allotment under the prescribed norms without any further loss of time”.
The Committee has further observed that the department should revise the rentals prescribed for such properties in order to bring them at par with the prevailing market rates with a view to generate revenue for proper maintenance and upkeep of such properties as has been done in case of Legislators and Government employees.
Referring to the maintenance of the departmental assets, the Committee observed that repairs and renovations of the buildings were not executed on rational and need basis. “While money was spent lavishly on certain works, the emergency requirements were being ignored by the Junior Engineers at the behest of the contractors”, the Committee said, adding “fraudulent bills were being preferred for payment by the contractors and entertained for payment at the cost of public exchequer”.
Citing a number of instances of irregularities, the Committee expressed its serious concern over the allotment of better accommodation to certain officers in civil and police departments in comparison to the Legislators in utter disregard to latter’s protocol under the Warrant of Precedence besides their constitutional position.
“Though the Article 72 of the Constitution equates the Legislators with Members of Parliament, the latter are provided with special accommodation with free water connections and 15,000 units of power per year free of cost”, the Committee observed, adding “even the standing criterion were not being adhered to in the matter of allotment of accommodation to the Government employees as well in accordance with their designation and status”.
About the hiring of private hotel accommodation for the Government employees, the Committee said, “physical verification of the actual occupation needs to be conducted regularly by the department as the instances of utilization of such accommodation by the hoteliers for the tourists have been reported by various agencies”, the panel said, adding “the hoteliers rent out the accommodation to the tourists and at the same time were charging the Government not only the rentals but huge amounts on account of food services to the employees fictitiously”.
The Committee has recommended that department should take necessary steps to rationalize and streamline the allotment procedures strictly in accordance with the dignity and the status of the allottee and initiative corrective measures to set right the irregularities committed in this behalf so far.
“The department should ensure proper maintenance of the assets and concentrate on basic requirements rather than spending funds lavishly on un-necessary renovations”, the panel said, adding “the department should expedite the execution of proposed constructions to augment the available accommodation in order to lessen the burden on the public exchequer on account of hiring of private accommodation/ hotels”.

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