Harsh Yadav
Lokmat News Network (Nagpur)
The state government, under the relief package for the September 23, 2023 flash floods, has disbursed a total of Rs 27.37 crores as relief for the citizens whose houses got damaged by flood. Last year the city witnessed one of the most devastating situations in its history when the water from the Ambazari lake started overflowing and due to blockage in the flow of Nag River and encroachments across its path causing water logging in the areas near it.
This waterlogging damaged both public infrastructure as well as private properties, mostly residences. It caused hundreds of cubic meters of sludge to settle inside people's houses. This caused damage to electronic goods as well as household items of the citizens.
After this flood, the state ordered a panchnama of the residences that were damaged in the floods. During this, the state government issued a notification sanctioning a relief of Rs 10,000 for each residence damaged in the flood irrespective of the amount of claim. The state also gave the responsibility of disbursement of these funds and scrutiny of panchnama to the Nagpur collectorate.
Documents obtained under the Right of Information (RTI) show that at that time a total of 32,222 properties were identified as damaged. These 'panchnamas' were done on two levels. First, by doing field visits by the officials of Nagpur collectorate and Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and second by the individual requests received by the citizens.
In this, a total of 32,222 were cleared but after scrutiny by actual ground visits the collectorate rejected 3,000 'panchnamas' as the claims made could not satisfy the guidelines set by the state government. In this total, the majority of 'panchnamas' were done in the areas of Imamawada, Shankar Nagar, Takiya slum, Kachipura, etc.At present Nagpur collectorate has disbursed relief against 27,372 'panchnamas' by using the direct bank transfer (DBT) mode. While doing this 1,850 transactions were returned to the collectorate as the information given by the citizens was incorrect. For example, some residents gave the IFSC code of their bank accounts with Allahabad Bank which has been merged into Indian Bank and hence the codes have been changed.
Another major point in the failure of these transactions was also due to lack of education and proper guidance to citizens. Many hadn't checked their bank accounts for several years and due to these remaining "inactive" the banks had frozen their accounts.
While talking to Lokmat Times, Tahsildar Nagpur (Urban) Santosh Khandre said, "From the start we have tried to help every citizen who faced difficulties in this catastrophe. At present, we have cleared over 95 per cent of the total 'panchnamas' of the residential damage claims. For the case of the DBTs which have been returned, we have initiated a new process to resolve the issue."