Dhanbad: To accelerate the ongoing rehabilitation process, the Jharia Rehabilitation and Development Authority (JRDA), the implementing agency for Jharia master plan, on Tuesday floated a tender inviting agencies to verify the credentials of 91,879 families living in the 595 underground fire-hit sites.

In 2017, the JRDA had floated two such tenders but got no response. This time, however, they have doubled the rate for the survey hoping that a few agencies would evince interest.

The agency will have to collect documents such as voter ID cards, Aadhaar cards, power bills and other official papers from the surveyed 91,879 families to find out if they had been staying there since August 28, 2004, the cut-off date for rehabilitation benefits.

The move comes in the wake of concerns being raised over the exponential rise in the number of families living in the coal fire-hit areas.

When the first survey was conducted by the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute in the late Eighties, 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.

Former Union coal secretary Anil Swaroop, during a review meeting of the rehabilitation process held in New Delhi in February last year, had even instructed the authorities to conduct a CBI probe if necessary.

Over the years, several attempts have been made by the JRDA to verify the figures of the two surveys to weed out the illegal settlers who started living in the area to avail the benefits of the rehabilitation package.

According to the Jharia master plan, each family is entitled to a house, subsidence allowance in form minimum wages of two years and shifting bonus of Rs 10,000.

"The survey rate, which was earlier Rs 5 for each household, has been raised to Rs 10. The selected agency will have to find out if families had settled in the coal fire-hit zone before the cut-off date of August 28, 2004," Rakesh Kumar Dubey, the senior resettlement and rehabilitation in-charge of JRDA, said.

The first socio-economic survey of the 595 fire-hit sites was carried out by the research scholars of Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research in 2006. In 2009, students of India School of Mines Environmental Science Engineering and Management were roped in. In 2013, Whiz Mantra Educational Solutions was engaged. The survey was completed in 2016.