Hasina Fakhroo had received an amount of Rs 2.5 lakh from the government under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and the family put another Rs one lakh they had saved to construct a house. The construction was completed some six months ago.
But on Monday, the district administration in Khargone, Madhya Pradesh demolished the house using bulldozers saying that it was built on government land and was illegal.
It was one of the 12 houses demolished by the district administration on Monday following the violence that broke out in Khargone on Ram Navami.
The district administration demolished the house using bulldozers on Monday saying that it was built on government land and was illegal, said Amjad Khan, the son of Fakhroo.
Khan said his house was demolished despite a note on the wall that it was built under PM Awas Yojana. "On Monday morning, a team of municipal workers came with bulldozers. We requested them not to demolish our house but they did not listen and razed it within minutes."
Documents with the family show that the house on Birla Marg was registered in the name of Hasina Fakhroo following the death of her husband who was the original beneficiary of the PM's housing scheme.
According to the family they had been living on the same plot even before a house was allotted to them under PMAY.
"That time they did not say it's a government land. Now, when we spent our hard earned money, they demolished the house saying it was built illegally," Khan told IANS.
However, according to officials, the house was supposed to be built somewhere else and it was being used for other than residential purposes.
¡°Under PMAY, houses are meant for residential purposes, but when the municipal team went in, it found it was being used for some other purpose. Nobody was living there," Chief Municipal Officer Priyanka Patel.
¡°They constructed the house on government land while they had got approval under PMAY for a house at a different place. A case of encroachment was going on in the tehsil court. The tehsildar had issued orders for its removal,¡± Patel added.
The Madhya Pradesh government had ordered the demolition of buildings owned by those involved in violence after communal clashes broke out in Khargone on the occasion of the Ram Navami celebration.
16 houses and 29 shops were razed across four locations in the town following the clashes Sunday.
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