Manesar Land scam: Stay orders cease to operate after January 27: HC

The bench was hearing a clutch of petitions, including one from former home secretary Rajeev Arora, who had challenged his summoning order by a Panchkula court in December 2020

Following a request from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Punjab and Haryana high court (HC) is to expedite the hearing on petitions related to the Manesar land scam in Haryana involving former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, pending since four years.

The HC bench of justice Manjari Nehru Kaul while fixing January 27 as the next date for hearing of petitions filed in 2020 made it clear that “interim order shall cease to be in operation after the adjourned date ” (File)

The HC bench of justice Manjari Nehru Kaul while fixing January 27 as the next date for hearing of petitions filed in 2020 made it clear that “interim order shall cease to be in operation after the adjourned date. ”

The bench was hearing a clutch of petitions, including one from former home secretary Rajeev Arora, who had challenged his summoning order by a Panchkula court in December 2020.

Earlier, CBI’s counsel Ravi Kamal Gupta had told the court that a stay has been in operation in favour of the accused persons for the last four years. Hence, he had prayed to fix an “actual date of hearing” so that the matters can be finally heard and disposed of.

The original controversy dates back to 2004. The Haryana government issued a notification to acquire 912 acres of land under Section 4 (1) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, on August 27, 2004, in Manesar, Lakhnaula and Naurangpur villages. Worried that this would reduce the value of their land, owners sold it at throwaway rates, resulting in a wrongful loss of ₹1,500 crore, as per the probe.

On August 24, 2007, then director industries passed another order, releasing the land, in violation of government policy, in favour of the people who had bought the land, instead of the original landowners, claims CBI. CBI started a probe in September 2015. In 2018, it filed a chargesheet against 34 accused, including former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. In December 2020, the CBI court in Panchkula had summoned Arora and four others for December 17 as accused, while further ordering framing of charges against Hooda and 32 others.

It was this order, which was challenged by Arora, a 1987 batch IAS officer and the four others summoned for allegedly committing an offence under Section 120B read with Section 420 of Indian Penal Code and Section 13 (2) read with Section 13 (1) (d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Arora served as the managing director of Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (HSIIDC) between 2005 and 2011.

Others summoned were former chief town planner, HSIIDC, Surjit Singh; former chief town planner of the town and country planning department, Dhare Singh; the then deputy superintendent, town and country planning, Kulwant Singh Lamba; and the then director, industries DR Dhingra. All these are petitioners before high court challenging the December 2020 order, which was stayed by the high court the same month.