BENGALURU:A group of 32 citizens from Whitefield, who had applied for property documents (khatas) two years ago and had collectively refused to pay any bribe, received them on Thursday.The citizens are residents of the apartment Splendid Eternity in Hoodi, and had applied for khatas on May 28, 2016. They encountered several delays owing to demands of bribe, red tape and flaws in the Sakala app, and had to follow up multiple times with the officials concerned. They realised, early on, that the process would expedite if they paid bribes, but still decided, out of principle, not to do so.
Malaya Parida, one of the residents, said officials had initially asked for bribes of `10-15,000 per plot, which was lowered to `8,000 after ‘negotiations’. “But we did not pay and our struggles started from then on. We heard khatas would be processed faster if we applied through the Sakala app ... and so we did that,” Parida said. Services requested through Sakala have to befulfilled within 45 days. However, though the citizens’ khatas did not arrive, the service request got automatically closed on the app.
Another resident Girish Hulamani said when they followed up, officials asked for a ‘sub-number.’ “None of us had it and we were told the bifurcation of the plot on which the apartments stood could not be done without it. Our argument was that we should have been informed about this earlier,” he said.Just before the elections, the residents approached the citizen group Whitefield Rising for help. Interactions were subsequently arranged between the citizens and Mahadevpura MLA Arvind
Limbavali and Joint Commissioner Pommala Sunil Kumar. “The MLA called and spoke to the Assistant Revenue Officer in front of us, which helped move the process,” Hulamani said.In these two years, a few residents, including Parida, have made multiple visits to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Office, but things progressed at a very slow rate. “Sometimes you have to really chase officials to get your work done,” Hulamani added.