Can LDA maths hide facts?

HAS NEHRU Enclave colony been purged of all illegal occupants? This is the question that has been doing the rounds after Tuesday?s drive by the LDA in which 76 flat-grabbers were evicted.

HAS NEHRU Enclave colony been purged of all illegal occupants? This is the question that has been doing the rounds after Tuesday’s drive by the LDA in which 76 flat-grabbers were evicted.

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Going by the public notice issued by the LDA on July 19, the Enclave had 79 encroachers in its various blocks. This was the first incongruity that surfaced in the Enclave imbroglio as only a day earlier in a meeting with Commissioner RK Mittal on the issue, the LDA officials had stated that the number of illegal occupants were 110.

In fact, the staff of LDA’s property section has been giving different figures on various occasions on the actual number of flat-grabbers in the colony. The inconsistency would have gone unnoticed but for a watch on the issue maintained by HT Lucknow Live, which took it up as a public campaign.

Sample this: In April LDA officials had admitted that out of 804 different types of flats in the colony 294 were under the illegal possession of mafias and their henchmen, police personnel, contractors, students’ leaders and some of its own employees. The development agency had freed 130 flats in its first eviction drive on April 15 and 76 in the Tuesday’s operation. That still leaves 88 flats in question unaccounted even as staff of the LDA’s property section is tight-lipped on the issue.

Information culled by HT Lucknow Live shows that of the 216 flats classified as ‘Rupayan’ construction of only 192 was completed. Of this while 146 were given possession of, 24 were incomplete and 46 were illegally occupied. Likewise, construction work on all the 108 flats under ‘Vatayan’ group was completed, 67 allottees were given possession by the LDA and the remaining 41 had unauthorized occupants.

The largest concentration of anti-socials, minions of students’ leaders and mafia dons is, however, in the blocks containing ‘Pushpayan’ and ‘Premayan’ type flats. While the former (Pushpayan) had unauthorised inhabitants in 120 out of the total 264 flats under the category, the latter (Premayan) had as many as 87 illegal occupants against a total of 216 apartments under the category.