Lucknow, Oct 22 (IANS) One man’s Right to Information (RTI) application has led to the Uttar Pradesh land consolidation department admitting Thursday that living people were declared dead in its records due to irregularities.
The matter came to light when Lal Bihari, a man who had been declared dead, sought the records through the RTI Act.

“I was declared dead in the records and all my land was grabbed by the influential people of my village using forged documents,” Bihari, a native of Hardoi district, said here.

“After making numerous efforts to prove myself alive, I decided to file an RTI application to expose the scam.”

However, Bihari was provided details of only 20 such ‘dead’ people.

“I had asked for the details of all such living ‘dead’ people in the state, but the department only provided me the details of 20 people in 10 districts,” Bihari said.

“There are thousands of such cases across the state and the department has just completed its formality by providing me the details of only 10 districts,” Bihari claimed.

Ashok Chandra, deputy director of the Chakbandi department told IANS: “We have provided Bihari with the details of Unnao, Hardoi, Lucknow, Azamgarh, Muzaffarnagar, Siddharthanagar, Kannauj, Barabanki, Faizabad and Rampur districts.

“There may be more such cases and we are looking into the matter.”