Delhi Assembly panel raises question on compensation for riots

Nearly six months after riot, the Kejriwal government has come under scanner for delays, mismatches and false rejections over compensation disbursal to riots victims and their families

A Delhi Assembly panel on welfare of minorities on Wednesday has asked state revenue department to review around 30 cases of mismatch between claims and amount sanctioned, and 50 cases of rejections, reported The Indian Express

According to the report, Usman Ali sought Rs 3 lakh in damages from the state government. He was paid Rs 750. Usman’s small restaurant in Gokulpuri was vandalised and looted during the riots in North East Delhi.

On February 25, a few days into her pregnancy, Gulzeb Parveen's husband Mohsin Ali was killed. Ali’s burnt body was found a few meters away from Khajuri Khas police station.

Parveen gave birth to a baby girl on Tuesday. The baby girl is in the ICU at a Hapur hospital.

“The compensation was withheld because we didn’t have Moshin’s death certificate… and that was delayed because of the lockdown. Now, we have submitted all the documents, but we still haven’t got any compensation,” Shahnawaz, Mohsin’s elder brother, said as quoted by Express.

Till now, over 900 claims have been rejected, out of 3,200 claims. Delhi government has cleared 1,526 claims and disbursed compensation amounting to around Rs 19 crore.

“The work on compensation did not get done despite directions from the CM and Deputy CM,” said Haji Yunus, AAP’s Mustafabad MLA and a member of the panel, to top officials of the district and revenue department during the meeting of the panel on Wednesday.

The revenue department officials informed the panel during the meeting that the compensation policy “needed more clarity, the absence of which is leading to a lot of confusion”.

“On the ground, a person claiming complete loot of say Rs 3 lakh will get Rs 1 lakh. But if a person says his shop was partially looted of Rs 6 lakh, he will only get Rs 50,000. The policy has been drafted in such a manner,” a senior official said to the panel.

When the panel enquired officials if they had tried to review rejected cases, they said it cannot be done in the absence of any government direction.

“If all the cases are reopened for review, we will effectively be opening a Pandora’s box. That is simply not practical. The panel should fix the criteria and some cases can be reviewed accordingly. After all, the claims were reviewed by teams of SDMs and PWD officials. The entire exercise cannot be doubted,” said a senior revenue department official.