The Chandigarh estate office often slips up when it comes to delivering services and redressal of grievances of city residents in a time-bound manner. The estate office has listed a total of 17 services that it claims to deliver in a prescribed time frame. However, it has so far failed to deliver these services within the prescribed time limit. For instance, as per the citizen charter of estate office, revised building plans are to be approved in 32 days, while fresh building plans are to be approved in 24 days. Contrary to the claims, the authorities are taking months to approve the building plans. [related-post] Surinder Bahga, a practicing architect and a nominated councillor, criticised the officials for sitting on the file and said the estate office was crippled with red tape and inefficiency. “Three building plans of mine are lying with the estate office for the past two years,” said Bahga. The estate office also claims to provide services such as conversion from residential leasehold to freehold in 60 days, execution of lease deed/deed of conveyance in 22 days, transfer on the basis of sale deed in 14 days and transfer on the basis of registered will. Federation of Sector Welfare Associations Chandigarh (FOSWAC) chairman Blinder Singh Bittu said the residents were ‘harassed’ by the officials and they were made to run from pillar-to post for availing services. Aware of the situation, Deputy Commissioner Ajit Balaji Joshi accepted that the current state did not paint a rose picture of the estate office. “We are working towards providing time-bound services and it will take us around two months to develop a mechanism,” said Joshi. Action plan prepared City residents visiting Chandigarh estate office could be spared of hassles at the hands of officials as an action plan has been chalked out to streamline the functioning of estate office. For many years, the officials of the estate office have been facing flak from the public for poor redresal of their grievances. At present, the public grievances redressal mechanism of the estate office is not functioning properly, as there is no effective system for tracking the movement of complaints lodged by residents at various levels. To tackle the chronic problem, all the complaints received will now be tracked on the internal network of the estate office. Giving details, Deputy Commissioner Ajit Balaji Joshi said that they would track every complaint. To dispose of complaints in a time-bound manner, the DC will hold a review meeting every Tuesday on complaints received. “Poor disposal of complaints is one of the main areas of concern for us,” said Joshi. Joshi will also hold a review meeting on every Friday to take a status report of number of people who approach estate office for availing various services and the action taken by officials in every regard.
