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Thursday, January 30, 2014

Compensation disbursement for Rongni Chu HEP affected awaits verification

GANGTOK, 29 Jan: A total of 18 families have been identified by the DC East office for disbursement of compensation relating to damages to their houses caused by blasting by Madhya Bharat.
Madhya Bharat is developing the 96 MW Rongni Chu hydroelectric project at Sumin in East Sikkim. The total amount to be disbursed has been calculated at around Rs. 37 lakh. However another matter that has cropped up in the wake of this is that some of the families claiming compensation may have already received compensation under the earthquake relief.
The company has been undertaking blasting works for the construction of the head race tunnel for the project at Sumin with the use of explosives. Due to this, families in the area had raised the issue that the blasting had caused damages to their houses. Cracks on the floors and walls are said to have begun to appear which were attributed to the excessive blasting works.
Following this a survey of the damages had been conducted by the Building & Housing department some time ago; while the allegations had been found to be genuine there had been a counter survey by the company itself which found a much lower number of families affected and therefore, the total amount to be disbursed as well. While earlier the figure was informed to be around Rs 50 lakh for around 40 families this has now come down to Rs. 37 lakh for 18 families.
While the DC, East, J Raje stated that the compensation would soon be disbursed there was one more verification to be conducted. It has now emerged that some of the affected families claiming compensation have already been compensated under the earthquake relief for house damage. In fact there are 10 families identified in the existing list of 18 affected families by the BDO are informed to have received compensation for house damage due to the earthquake of 18 September.
It is this which needs verification in terms of whether they have actually received the compensation and whether the damages that they claim to their dwellings are post earthquake or not.  A family cannot be compensated twice for the same damage and therefore as soon as this has been verified the compensation amount for the affected families will be disbursed, the DC, informed.

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