JOIN USA retired army officer’s wait for allotment of a plot in north Delhi’s Rohini area has not ended since 1981 due to delays from the DDA’s end.
In protest, he has now returned four medals, including a gallantry award he got in the 1971 War, to the Chief Justice of India. Captain M S Uppal wrote to the CJI expressing anguish over the delay and returned the medals on Thursday.
In 2007 he had returned his medals to the President on the same issue but they were given back to him with a promise of an early solution to his grievance. The retired officer said he has written to the CJI that the medals were of “no use as the country, and the DDA particularly, does not respect a soldier and a citizen of India”.
He had applied for a 90 sq metre plot under the Delhi Development Authority’s Rohini Residential Scheme of 1981, paying a booking amount of Rs 5,000. In his letter, Uppal claimed that despite promises made by the land owning agency to the Delhi High Court and to the Supreme Court his plot was still a distant dream.
Uppal said when he returned is medals to the president in 2007, they were given back to him by the Lieutenant Governor, who is also the chairman of the DDA, with a written promise that the matter would be resolved soon. Nothing has changed since then, he said.
At the time of booking the plot, DDA in1981 proposed that all registrants will be allotted a fully developed plot of the size applied for within five years.
But agency kept on delaying the allotment to him and other registrants, saying there was not enough land available.