Interest on payment mounting, HSVP plot owners to resume stir

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 19

Irked over the delay by the Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP) in starting re-calculation of enhancement charges on plots, the Haryana State HUDA Sectors Confederation on Sunday announced to re-launch its agitation at the district level after August 22 and gherao the state Assembly on September 10.

“We will restart our dharnas in all districts of the state once the mourning period announced by the government as a mark of respect to Vajpayee ends on August 22. We had a programme to gherao the state Assembly on August 20, but the government postponed the monsoon session. Now, we have decided to gherao the Assembly on September 10,” said Yashbir Malik, president of the confederation.

Malik claimed that during their meeting with the government on August 14, senior officers of the HSVP and the government had admitted that the points raised by the confederation were valid, but they remained non-committal on their implementation and the start of re-calculation.

“The government simply wants to buy time and has no plan of providing justice to the plot holders in HUDA sectors who have been served hefty and erroneous enhancement notices. But we will not take things lying down and will re-launch our agitation against the state government,” he added.

Malik said that the confederation has been demanding that plot holders should be burdened with enhancement only on the size of the plot they own and not on the land owned by HUDA; the interest rate of 15 per cent is not acceptable and also interest on the intervening period when the demand of enhancement was delayed by HUDA was totally unjust.

HSVP has issued “hefty” enhancement notices to plot holders across the state which, according to the confederation, includes erroneous amounts added on back dates as old as 20 years and then, 15 per cent interest for decades was added to that amount.

Following the outcry, the HSVP had offered “one-time settlement” with 40 per cent rebate from May 15 for two months, but very few people paid their dues as the plot-holders alleged that the “erroneous” additions to their accounts were much more than the rebate.

The HSVP had on August 8 announced the start of the process of re-calculation and had called meetings of residents’ welfare associations (RWAs) on August 13 and 14.