Jharia residents town have expressed apprehension over the demographic survey being carried out to check the credentials of around 91,271 families living in the 595 areas affected by the fire in underground coal seams.

“We fear that a number of people in the town will be displaced after the survey is complete,” said former ward 37 councillor Anup Sao on Sunday. He added that the survey had put a question mark over the existence of town.

“How can legal title holders be assured that documents submitted by them to the surveyors will be accepted as BCCL claims that most of the land in the town belongs to the company,” he added.

The survey is being carried by Jharia Rehabilitation and Development Authority (JRDA), the implementing agency for Jharia Master Plan.

The work includes collection of documents such as voter ID cards, Aadhaar cards, power bills and other official papers from the surveyed families to find out if they had been staying there since August 28, 2004, the cut-off date for rehabilitation benefits. Since March 25, 2010, when the rehabilitation process began, around 3,500 families have been shifted to newly-built quarters at Belgarhia under Baliapur.

Dhanbad additional district magistrate (law and order) Rakesh Kumar Dubey, who is also the rehabilitation and resettlement in charge of JRDA, said, “Altogether 16 teams of surveyors and three NGOs have been carrying out the survey of the 595 fire affected sites spread across the district for about a month now.” He added that while survey of 350 sites had already been completed, the remaining places would be covered within a week or 10 days.

“We are including both Legal Title Holders (LTH) and non-legal Title Holders (encroachers) in the survey. We are clarifying doubts and apprehensions expressed by the local residents,” Dubey said. In Sabzibagan area of Jharia town, the survey is being conducted by NGO Jeevandeep Trust on behalf of JRDA.

“We will have to verify the documents being submitted by the legal title holders of the fire-hit areas,” said Dubey.

Under the Jharia Master Plan, there are separate provisions of houses and monetary compensation for encroachers.

Amit Sahu, president of Jharia Chamber of Commerce and member of Koylanchal Nagrik Sangh said, “Instead of conducting a survey to identify people living in the fire –hit areas, JRDA should make provisions of fire-fighting.”

When the first survey was conducted by the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute in the late 1980s, there were 65,300 families living in the area. However, the number swelled to 91,879 when a re-survey was conducted by Whiz Mantra Educational Solutions between 2013 and 2016.