5,500 Bharmour families to get pending incentive
Naresh Thakur
Tribune News Network
Chamba, February 12
About 5,500 families of the Bharmour Assembly constituency, affected by National Hydropower Corporation’s Chamera-III project, will soon get the cash incentive under the Local Area Development Fund (LADF), which has not been paid for the past three years.
Surjeet Bharmouri, a local Congress leader and member of the Board of Directors (BoD) of Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC), said as per the government guidelines, the families in a project affected area (PAA) get additional cash incentives.
As many as 14 panchayats of the Bharmour constituency are affected by Chamera-III hydro power project. Five of these panchayats fall in the Bharmour development block and nine in the Mehla block. The number of eligible families to get the cash incentive is around 5,500, he said. Of the total, more than 2,700 are BPL families.
Bharmouri, who had been continuously raising the issue of stalled installment with the government, said most of the affected families were not getting the cash incentive for the last three years even as the project authorities had deposited Rs 11 crore with the Directorate of Power.
“As per the authorities, the incentives were delayed due to the wrong bank account numbers or incomplete papers,” said Bharmouri, adding that the affected families have been getting the incentives from 2012 when the project was commissioned. However, the incentives for the year 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23 were due to be paid and the total amount comes around Rs 27 crore.
As per the directives issued by the Additional Deputy Commissioner, camps will be organised from February 13 to February 21 in different panchayats. Once the process is complete the families would start getting the funds.
The LADF is administered and maintained by the LAD committee composed of various stakeholders, government departments, project developers and public or nominated representatives from the PAA.
