Valuables gathering dust in Post office to be auctioned soon

NEW DELHI: Over 33,000 unclaimed articles like jewellery, cell phones, cameras and watches are gathering dust since last three years at the Returned Letter Office of the postal department here, awaiting bonafide owners to claim them before these go under the hammer.

The department in an RTI response, filed by PTI, revealed that there were 8,070 undelivered mails in the year 2012, 11,938 mails in 2013 and 13,075 mails in 2014, totalling 33,083 mails that post officials are planning to auction soon as the rightful claimants have so far not come to pick them up.

These returned mails/parcels include jewelry, watches, cell phones, cameras, books, imitation jewelry, and stationary items among others.

These (undelivered) parcels land in the Returned Letter Office (RLO) only when the addresses of both the sender and recipient are found to be inconclusive.

According to the RTI reply, Department of Post auctioned undelivered mails twice in 2010 and then five times in 2011, fetching Rs 1.11 lakh in all seven attempts.

Rule 435 of the P&T Manual, provisions that if parcels/articles remain unclaimed, they should be auctioned. However, there is no specific provision on the timings of auctions and it is only on the discretion of the officials concerned to decide as to when they should go under the hammer.

Pranav Kumar, the Director of Marketing and Business Development of Department of Post said that the auction process is transparent.

"Before going for auction, we form a committee and appoint an auctioneer from outside. The auctioneer then fixes the quotation and auctioning process takes place in a transparent manner," he said.

He also said that before auctioning, the department gives an advertisement in at least one newspaper mentioning all details of the articles to be auctioned.