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Bengal

HIDCO allots 139 EWS flats through lottery

The Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) on Wednesday allotted around 139 Economically Weaker Section (EWS) flats to people through lottery in which around 5,000 applicants participated.

The lottery was held at Netaji Indoor Stadium on Wednesday afternoon for the flats that are coming up at New Town. HIDCO will return the money to the unsuccessful applicants within a month. Around 20 people have been kept in the waiting list. After allotment, HIDCO authorities will now examine the documents submitted by the allottees. Senior HIDCO officials felt that the yearly income of some of the allottees may be more than the stipulated amount and in that case their allotment will be scrapped. It is because of this that 20 people have been kept in the waiting list.

To make the lottery transparent, women applicants and senior citizens have been asked to select the names through lottery. The names of the applicants were kept in one box and the application numbers were kept in another. They were asked to take out two chit papers, one each from the two boxes. Earlier, HIDCO had allotted EWS flats to the land losers of New Town.

After coming to power, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee abolished the chairman's quota in allotting the plots. There are allegations of nepotism against the erstwhile Left Front government in allotting plots of land. The then Housing minister, Gautam Deb, distributed the plots among people known to him without publishing advertisements in newspapers. Banerjee made Debashis Sen, an IAS officer as the chairman of HIDCO, the post which is usually reserved for political personalities.

There was a lot of enthusiasm among the applicants as a result of which HIDCO had to host the lottery at Netaji Indoor Stadium. The applicants did not complain of any nepotism as the lottery took place in their presence and names of the allottees were put up outside the stadium.
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