BENGALURU: Joice’s father David, a retired Vidhana Soudha employee, died four months ago without getting hold of his site at Arkavathy Layout. The 72-year-old allottee visited Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) office for nearly two years, but in vain.
Now, his 40-year-old daughter desperately visits the BDA office on a regular basis in the hope that at least she can get possession of their property. This single woman lost her mother in 2012, and is now literally fighting a single-handed battle for possession of the site.
Having quit her job as a Senior Executive at HSBC Bank two years ago to help her father get his 20x30 site allotted from BDA in 2007, Joice takes care not to miss a single meeting organised by numerous allottee associations. She was there on Thursday afternoon having travelled from Mahalakshmi Layout to take part in another protest.
“Many of those who were allotted the sites were senior citizens. It is agonising and stressful for all of them to make repeated visits for their property despite paying the entire amount. Some even died over the years,” Madhava Rao, vice-president of the Arkavathy Layout Allottees Association had said during one of the previous protest meets.
Unfortunately, David’s site, which is in the 8th Block of the Layout, figured among those which were denotified.
What was shocking was the lack of information to the site owner, says Joice. “My father had no clue that the site was denotified and he kept on paying the property tax annually needlessly.”
Finally Joice decided to visit the office in person in early 2015 and learnt to her shock that their site was denotified much earlier.
“They did not even bother to inform my aged father that the site had been denotified. This really upset me and since he does not know much, I quit my job and started accompanying him to the BDA office regularly,” said Joice, who presently works part-time in a real-estate firm. With a tinge of sadness, Joice adds, “He was really proud to own a BDA site and really wanted possession of it.”