DHARNA OF URBAN POOR DEMANDING CANCELLATION OF DUDA LOTTERY
Condolence offered on passing away of Bhai Vaidya
This is a classic example of how the anti-poor Bhartiya Janata Party governments operate.
A list of 381 families, mostly dalits and minorities, was given to District Urban Development Agency in Lucknow requesting for housing under any urban poor housing scheme. The Project Officer, Nidhi Vajpayee told us to submit individual applications as the administration intended to conduct a process of lottery for allotment. When the lottery results were announced only one out of 381 made it to the list. This one person Kiran Jaiswar had also filed a complaint on the Chief Minister’s public grievance portal ‘junsunwai.up.nic.in’.
The PO, DUDA informed us that only 8,000 applications received on junsuwai portal in the form of complaints were considered for the lottery. Rest, including those of 381, submitted by hand were not even included in the lottery. The reason being given is that it would have been physically impossible to conduct any enquiry of total number of application which were close to 30,000. Moreover, the lottery was conducted without any screening process to shortlist the deserving families. Most of the above mentioned 381 families don’t have a mobile phone required to register a complaint on jansunwai.
Clearly, the lottery process carried out by DUDA is faulty as it left out all those who submitted applications by hand and therefore are likely to be poorer than those who filed their complaints on CM’s portal with their mobiles phones. Moreover, carrying out the lottery without screening reduces the probability of a deserving poor making it to list.
Our demand is to cancel the lottery conducted by DUDA, carry out a screening process to shortlist the deserving and then give houses to all urban poor because ‘Housing for All’ is government’s promise to people.
On 3rd April, 2018, the 6th day of dharna about 200 members, mostly women, also offered condolence on the passing away of former President of Socialist Party (India) Bhai Vaidya a day earlier by standing in silence for a minute.
On 4th April, the 7th day of dharna the administration cracked down on the dharna after dark, packed the women in a bus and took them to Dubagga area where most of them had come from. Three youth, Gaurav Singh of Yuva Shakti Sangathan and Shubham Singh Chauhan and Ramji Verma, students of Dr. Shakuntla Mishra National Rehabilitation Univeristy were taken to Harzaratganj Chowki and let off on personal bond.
The PO, DUDA has promised to conduct another lottery within a month taking into account additional complaints registered on CM’s portal after speaking with District Magistrate.
The dharna has been suspended to give time to the district administration to make amends for the mistakes it committed in the first lottery.
Guddi, 8052262712, Guddi, 9198748129, Zeenat, 9455104627, Sandeep Pandey, Socialist Party (India), Ph: 0522 4242830
