Srinagar, Mar  6:  The  Housing and Urban Development Department (H&UDD) has violated the guidelines set by the Union Ministry for Housing Urban and Poverty Alleviation for implementing Housing For All (HFA) project.

The H&UDD has advertised 44 posts under various specializations including urban town planner and urban infrastructure specialists for HFA project but as per the notification various cities selected under HFA have been merged by the concerned department which is completely against set guidelines of the HFA.

Joint Director, H&UDD on March 4, 2016 advertised these posts and single posts have been advertised for cities with more than 10 lakh population and the same number of posts have also been advertised for cities with 35,000 urban population, which is against the set guidelines.

As per the guidelines issued by the Union Ministry for Housing Urban and Poverty Alleviation, there should be 2 to 4 specialists/ experts in a city depending upon the population for HFA. Also for example, Jammu and Srinagar cities, where population is more than 10 lakh, the H&UDD can engage more experts for proper implementation of the project HFA but as per the advertisement notification Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal has been clubbed and only one post for each specialization has been advertised and same has been done for Jammu, RS Pura and Udhampur.

As per the population of selected cities approved by Union Ministry under HFA, the urban population of Srinagar is 12,06,419, Budgam 15,338 and Ganderbal 28,233 which 12,49,990 in total. Similarly the urban population of Jammu 5,76,198, RS Pura 15,197, Udhampur 84,015 totaling  6,75, 410.  While as the cities with less urban population like Kupwara and Handwara (35, 371) has also single post for each specialization.

The other cities like Anantnag, Shopian, Pulwama, Bijbehera, Kishtwar, Ramban, Doda and Bhaderwah have also been clubbed despite the fact that the population, topography and geography of these cities is entirely different and the person engaged has to cater the vast area for the implementation of the project HFA.

Besides the population criteria, another parameter has been violated by State H&UDD is regarding the age factor. According to advertisement notification, 3 to 5 and 5 to 7 years experience is required for each specialization and the upper age limit has been kept at  40. But as per the guidelines of concerned Union Ministry, keeping vast experience and other factors of flagship programme (HFA) in consideration, 50 years has been fixed.

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