Azamgarh is the Lok Sabha constituency of the
Samajwadi Supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav. His son Akhilesh Yadav is the Chief
Minister of Uttar Pradesh. There are many ministers in the cabinet of Shri
Akhilesh Yadav who hail from the district. However, if you go to Azamgarh, you
will not find anything that gives you the feel of any VIP constituency. Go to the
District Hospital and witness the horrible condition of the patients. There are
many class-1 dispensaries in the district with reasonably good buildings sans
doctors and other medical equipment. Private doctors are literally rolling in money.
People are being fleeced by the private doctors and the owners of the shanty
Hospitals day in and day out because there is no choice left for them. The
government finds itself thoroughly incapable of having any control over its own
hospitals.
I was in Azamgarh last week for three days and
had to go to the many offices for a small personal work. In normal course, I
should not have been harassed to go to the offices yet the Babus made me run
for two days. I went to the PWD office to take the compensation of my land,
which was acquired by the state government for construction of the approach road
in 2013. I must have written half a dozen letters to different District
Magistrates and Executive Engineers of the PWD from time to time for the sake
of the payment of petty amount of compensation but every time I got the evasive
reply from them. During this visit I first met the present District Magistrate,
Suhas L.Y., who is a well behaved Kannadiga. He is a very young, dashing officer
indeed and is not more than 35 years. He was very warm and courteous to me and
assured me that the compensation would be given in the shortest possible time.
He agreed with me that the Administration should have taken my bank account number
and identity proof and instead of giving the cheque, the money could have been
directly transferred to the bank account. This method should have been adopted
in the cases of all land owners, whose lands have been acquired. This is certainly
very logical but in government offices, logic hardly works. The D.M. asked his
OSD to contact the concerned Executive Engineer, who was in the state capital
Lucknow on that day. The energetic District Magistrate then told me to meet the
Executive Engineer the next day and get the compensation amount then and there
as his instructions would have been conveyed to him by then.
As advised by District Magistrate I went to the
office of the Executive Engineer Mr. K. Gore. He was not in the office, then
somebody suggested me to go to his residence, which is barely 25 meters away
from his office. The Executive Engineer was cordial and he assured me to
cooperate to the fullest possible. However, he also told me that the payment of
compensation would require some paper work, which in fact is a lot of paper
work. Thereafter started my travails. I was asked to go along with an Amin, who
took me from one office room to other, from one Engineer to the other.
After three hours of hectic running from one place
to the other, I thought that the amount would be handed over to me but in the
end I was told by the Executive Engineer to reach to the office of the Tehsil
Sub Registrar next day to relinquish the land in favour of the department to
receive the cheque in lieu thereof. I was also asked to bring two witnesses
with their photographs and identity cards. Tehsil building is 18 kms away from
my village and nearly 35 kms from the District headquarters of Azamgarh. I had
no choice but to go to the Tehsil office at Burhanpur. There are many deed
writers, who sit in Tehsil building, whose introduction to the new technology
is confined to only mobile phones and photocopiers. One of them wrote deed of
my land in long hands, witnesses were made to sign, their photographs were
taken, fingerprints of the buyer and sellers were also obtained at many places
in the register.
Deed writing in long hands takes nearly one and
half hours but if the computers are allowed to be used, it can be done in 7 or
8 minutes. After nearly four hours of strain the cheque for Rs. 85000/- was
given to me. The anomaly in the rate of the compensation is clearly visible.
Those who had taken the compensation in 2013 before the Land Acquisition Bill
was passed they also got the same amount, which I was given three years
thereafter in 2016. I was told that if the compensation had been given to me as
per new rates, I could have got nearly Rs. 45 lakhs. But there is no use in
arguing with the employees in the district administration. In fact, there is no
government worth name in Uttar Pradesh. It is the writ of Revenue officials,
Police and Babus of various departments runs in the entire state. They listen
to you only when you are a politician or an influential moneyed man, otherwise you
have to suffer at their hands and pay them bribe for the movement of files. A euphemistic
word ‘speed money’ is used for bribes.
The offices of the Sub-Registrar in the Tehsils
across the state of Uttar Pradesh reek with the corruption, laxity and
incompetence. Their non-cooperation to both buyers and sellers is seen to be
believed. While the buyers will be asked to cough up the money to do the work
the sellers are be treated with disdain. This deplorable condition prevails in
almost all offices. But in Police Stations, Hospitals, Courts, PWD offices,
Sales Tax Offices and Sub Registrar Offices, the condition is very appalling. I
have not been able to understand while the technology is not being used, which
is bound to bring efficiency, and rid the offices from corruption to a large
extent. Technology will also considerably save time, money and harassment of
the public. Computerisation has been adopted with half-hearted approach in all
offices. The employees working in the government offices come and go at their
own sweet wills. While the condition of roads has certainly improved in the
present regime of Akhilesh Yadav, the law and order situation has touched its
nadir. Electricity supply is very erratic. Sometimes the electricity is
supplied in the day time and sometimes in the night. People have no alternative
but suffer in silence.
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