Residents left with demolished homes

 

 

 

THREE years after the MangalBhainsajhar road was declared largely complete, 46 affected residents of Mangla continue to await compensation totalling about Rs 14.6 crore. What the public sees as a finished Asian Development Bank (ADB)-supported corridor masks a dense paper trail of sanctioned payments, departmental queries and files stamped ‘pending clarification.’ The result: residents left with demolished homes or partial structures and no payment in hand. RTI disclosures and correspondence reviewed for this report show that the 25.958-km Package-18 (ADB Loan-3) was processed with consent-based acquisition notes in 2022. Official schedules record compensation calculations for multiple beneficiaries - individual approved amounts ranging from Rs 40.49 lakh to Rs 80.99 lakh - aggregating to roughly Rs 14.6 crore for 46 names.

 

Yet not a single beneficiary has been paid. Letters between the Bilaspur Collector, the Divisional Commissioner and the State Revenue Department (April–June 2025) show repeated queries marked ‘pending clarification.’ The State Secretariat specifically asked why payments remained unreleased despite sanction. RTI activist Sukumar Yadav pursued multiple applications and supplied the documentation that exposed the chain of approvals and notations. His filings show how valuation sheets, ownership proofs and consent forms (‘A’ and ‘B’) moved through the Collectorate and PWD in 2022 but practical disbursal stalled thereafter.

 

“Files were moved and sanction entries were made. Yet people who gave up part of their homes have received nothing,” Yadav told this newspaper. Documents, photographs and visual records availed to The Hitavada by RTI petitioners and affected residents show houses along Ward Nos. 14 and 15 in Mangla with official markings, demolition scars and statutory notices dated 2022. According to Yadav, several residents have retained copies of these notices and sanction sheets bearing khasra numbers and departmental stamps, all pointing to incomplete compensation. A senior official in the Collectorate confirmed that the new Collector, Sanjay Agrawal, who assumed charge recently, has ordered a comprehensive review of acquisition files and sought consolidated status notes from the PWD and Revenue offices. That review now under way is the step that residents and RTI petitioners say must end years of administrative silence with either payment or a public, documented decision. Until that review yields a clear reconciliation of files and field, the Rs 14.6 crore will remain a sanctioned figure on paper and a grievance for those whose builtup areas were taken in good faith.