About 80 families stay put in Jewar villages over rehabilitation demands
GREATER NOIDA: Families from six villages affected by the Jewar airport project will assemble at the rehabilitation and resettlement (RnR) site in Jewar Bangar township on Saturday morning to press for their pending demands.
About 450 families still have certain issues that remain unresolved, of which 70 to 80 families are staying put at their native villages without power and water connections. They claim that many benefits under the rehabilitation scheme have not been passed on to them.
These dissenting villagers are, in fact, camping under broken houses, tents or tarpaulin. Most of them are staying in Nagla Shareef Khan and Nagla Ganeshi, with a handful camping in Rohi too. In the absence of electricity, their lives are similar to the ones who stay in refugee camps with bare minimum resources.
Hasan Mohammad, 41, from Nagla Shareef Khan is one such villager.
He claims that benefits due to his son Nasruddin have not been offered under the RnR scheme. Though an adult member of the displaced families is eligible for Rs 5 lakh and a plot, Nasruddin has not got the money or other benefits.
The team constituted to address the grievances of the affected villagers had rejected the claims by dubbing Nasruddin as a minor. Under the RnR scheme and the Land Acquisition Act, benefits can be offered only to adults. To determine the eligibility of adults, authorities kept November 3, 2018, as the cut-off date.
Though Nasruddin’s Aadhaar card shows his date of birth as February 5, 2018, he was not found eligible for the RnR scheme. “He was not present in the village during the first two surveys. He is a bit slow and mostly remains indoors under someone’s watch,” said his father.
Similarly in his early 40s, Shiv Kumar stayed back in Rohi. “My four sons have not been offered RnR benefits and plots. We submitted all the documents to the team of officials that visited our village in July. Some left out children were included but my sons were shown as outsiders by the team,” he said.
Grievances pertaining to RnR scheme benefits of several others from Nagla Shareef Khan, Nagla Ganeshi and Rohi such as Fakruddin, Haseena and Harpal also remain unsolved.
When contacted, sub-divisional magistrate of Jewar, Rajni Kant said, “We are going to visit the RnR site on Saturday morning. We will make a list of families having grievances. Though we have already disposed of the grievances in July, issues that appear genuine will be examined again.”