The Indian Express              05.09.2013

Regularisation of illegal properties: MC steals a march over GLADA

Despite MC being a local body and GLADA being a state authority
under PUDA (Punjab Urban Development Authority), the former has marched
ahead of GLADA and issued more than 300 NOCs to the city residents while
GLADA in 14 days has issued mere nine NOCs. That too after causing much
inconvenience to the residents.

While the MC, identifying more than 200 such colonies in all its
four zones, has issued the schedule of camps to be held in each colony
till October 4, the GLADA has failed to attend to even the residents
approaching their main PUDA office.

Thanks to online form filling, the officer sitting on fourth
floor and callous attitude of GLADA officials, people are returning with
complaints and not NOCs. However, the MC after taking the prescribed
fee is issuing NOCs on the spot after filling a manual form.

“I went to get my plot registered in GLADA office and first I was
told to fill form online. Since I never used computer, I did not know
how to do it. When I asked GLADA official sitting there to help me out,
he told me to go back and fill form at home and then come,” said an
applicant.

Harbans Singh, 67, had some queries related to the process and
when he reached PUDA office, he was told to go to the fourth floor where
the officer was sitting. “Forget organising the camps, they did not
even have an official to attend to the queries. I can’t climb four
floors and thus I returned without getting an NOC,” he said.

Not only this, even the people who fill online form and submit money
are asked to visit next day to collect NOCs. “These officials think that
we are free to come here daily. First, they made me run for three days
in this online form filling process, and now they need a day more to
issue NOC,” said another resident.

When contacted, Baldev Singh, additional chief administrator,
GLADA, said, “There are no such issues. Our staff is helping people in
filling out online forms.”

Ranjit Singh, GLADA XEN, said, “Till today we have issed nine
NOCs but till tomorrow, the number will reach 40 as many applications
were processed today. There was some issue with computer that NOCs were
not issued on the spot.”