But, big sharks swim to safety

EVEN AS the CBI is conducting a probe into the level and extent of LDA officials? involvement in the Jankipuram land scam, the role of engineers in the fraud has been given a go-by by the authorities.

EVEN AS the CBI is conducting a probe into the level and extent of LDA officials’ involvement in the Jankipuram land scam, the role of engineers in the fraud has been given a go-by by the authorities.

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Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav had suspended 14 officials when the scam surfaced in February this year but none of those against whom action was initiated included an engineer despite clear indications of their complicity also in the matter.

Following HT Lucknow Live expose in the matter, the LDA authorities had ordered a departmental inquiry to identify the engineers who had signed on the fake lease plans used in the real estate racket. Subsequently, the role of seven
engineers including two executive and assistant engineers each and three junior engineers, who were looking after the housing scheme, had come under a cloud.

“Their number, however, could go up as each lease plan is signed by three engineers comprising an executive, an assistant and a junior engineer and we have detected 124 such cases so far,” said an LDA official.

“This fellow is know to have pulled strings following which the authorities stalled the institution of an inquiry against them on the ground that the signatures on the lease plan should first be verified,” said an official.

The decision was taken after a powerful politician of the ruling party wrote a letter to the Chief Minister pleading the engineers case, according to sources.

But the government, in the case of LDA officials, who were suspended following unearthing of the land scam, made no such consideration.

These officials too had claimed that their signatures on the property documents were forged.