Duare Tran drive: State initiates process of verification a week before the set date

Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government has initiated the task of needed verification to compensate damages under—Duare Tran outreach programme— caused due to Cyclone Yaas a week before its set date.

The move is taken to ensure no delay in transferring the benefits in bank accounts of genuinely affected people.

The set date of initiating verification was June 19 that is a day after the closing date of receiving applications by holding camps in every affected gram Panchayats. But the verification process by engaging teams of field officers has begun from June 12. "Separate teams of officers have been engaged to carry out the verification. We have already received more than 2 lakh applications. So its no point waiting for completion of receiving of all applications till June 18," said a senior state government officer.

According to the sources, the state government has set up 974 camps in five cyclone affected districts and two others where tornado had hit on the same day and received 2.49 lakh applications, apart from those received in drop boxes at Duare Tran camps. North and South 24-Parganas, East and West Midnapore and Howrah are the cyclone Yaas affected districts while tornado caused havoc at Hooghly's Chinsurah and one at Birbhum's Murarui.

The officers in the verification team have an application installed in their mobile phones. They are receiving the details, as per their applications, of affected people through the app and visiting the locations to verify whether the claim of damage caused by the cyclone is true. They also need to geo-tag the damaged property and even upload its photographs mentioning latitude and longitude of the location through the same app. It is being done to ensure a full proof verification process before giving out the compensation and this comes when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has clearly stated that none of the genuinely affected people get deprived of their state government's assistance for which she already made a primary allotment of Rs 1,000 crore.

"Each team will carry out verification for all concerned departments. For example, if an applicant incurs loss for damages in crops, house and livestock. Then the verification for all will be carried out in one single visit by the same team," the officer said. The field officers have undergone a training programme on the use of the mobile phone app and other related aspects on Friday. "There training programme was extremely crucial as timely and errorless execution of the verification process is the foundation of the Duare Tran outreach programme," the officer said.

The collection of application that started on June 3 will, however, continue for all 15 days till June 18. The state government will complete giving the compensation by directly transferring it to beneficiaries' bank accounts in between July 1 to 8.