Chennai: Few takers for tenant info plan

CHENNAI: A week after an order was issued instructing house owners to submit details of their tenants, the city police, who issued over 50,000 forms for this purpose, have received only 3,800-odd filled in applications till date. Police said they discovered that most house owners were hesitating to walk into a police station to pick up or submit the completed forms and preferred other means to make the submission.  According to police, out of the 12 police districts in the city, 17,050 forms were issued in the St Thomas Mount alone but the police stations there had received only 787 filled in forms in return. “We have been getting good response from the house owners but they were finding it difficult only either because of their tenant or that they are busy. That delays the submission. Besides, they also have to get the photographs of all their tenants along with their signatures,” a police official said.More than house owners approaching their local police stations to collect the forms, it is the beat constables and policemen on patrol who had been distributing the forms to more number of house owners in their respective jurisdictions. Forms were also distributed to house owners who arrived at the police commissioner’s office to submit petitions at the public grievances cell, police said. The order instructing house owners to submit information of their tenants was issued on March 3 and the deadline for submission was set for May 1, 2012. Those who did not submit were punishable under IPC section 188.Police sources said some house owners preferred a facility where they either could email it to the police stations or simply fax the papers. “Though the forms are available on the police website, submission has to be done in person. In some cases, tenants say their house owners live in other states or abroad and they had come all the way to submit the filled in forms. They wished they had a simpler way of submitting the forms,” a police official said. Police sources also claimed that some house owners hesitated to give information about their tenants.Following the submission of the forms, policemen would go for verification to the houses to gain confidence of the house owners and  further classify them into family and bachelors.