Move aimed at ensuring no beneficiary can avail of free or concessional housing more than once.
The state housing department issued directions to maintain such a database as part of its set of fresh instructions to determine the eligibility of slum-dwellers for rehabilitation as per the new cut-off date.
Written by Manasi Phadke | Mumbai | Published on:May 24, 2015 1:04 am
The state government has directed the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) to create an Aadhaar card-based database of all slum-dwellers who have been rehabilitated in new houses, and ensure the information is readily available on the authority’s website for anyone to access.
The intention behind the move is to keep a tab on every beneficiary of slum rehabilitation schemes and ensure that the benefit is redeemed only once and prevent enrolment of the same person or family members in other concessional or free housing schemes run by the state.
A state housing department official, who did not wish to be named, said, “As of now, there is no fool-proof mechanism to detect if a person who has got a new house under the slum rehabilitation scheme is himself or through any of his immediate family members vying for another house under the SRA. There have been such cases in the past and we have been able to act only on the basis of those complaints so far.”
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The state government has asked the SRA to share the database with agencies such as Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, City and Industrial Development Corporation, Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, and Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation.
“This will ensure that a slum dweller having benefited under SRA will be immediately declared ineligible for any other housing scheme of the government,” the official said. He, however, added that slum dwellers without an Aadhaar card will not be denied housing, but will be asked to register for the unique identification number.
The state housing department issued directions to maintain such a database as part of its set of fresh instructions to determine the eligibility of slum-dwellers for rehabilitation as per the new cut-off date. The erstwhile Congress-NCP government had, prior to elections, raised the cut-off date for eligibility for slum rehabilitation to January 1, 2000, from the previous January 1, 1995, which is likely to bring about 3 lakh slum dwellers more in Mumbai itself under the ambit of free housing.
The former government also introduced a transfer policy, which means anyone who has purchased a pre-2000 slum structure at any point of time by paying a transfer fee to the government will be protected based on sufficient proof of having lived in the slum tenement.
Under the original SRA policy, not only did the slum structure have to be in existence prior to the cut-off year of 1995, the occupier too, was required to have stayed in it before the cut-off year.
Simpreet Singh, an activist with the Ghar Banao Ghar Bachao Andolan, said, “With the transfer policy, there is certainly a need to have stringent checks to ensure that people don’t fraudulently benefit under the slum rehabilitation scheme. However, linking the beneficiary’s Aadhaar card will be a flawed system of going about it. The court has issued clear directions that Aadhaar card is not mandatory for any person to avail of any government scheme.”
manasi.phadke@expressindia.com