E-Paper
LDA covers up another green crime
MUCH BEFORE the Jankipuram land scam hit the headlines, another similar property racket in which green belt land was sold off on Kanpur Road was detected in the LDA but was subsequently hushed up.
MUCH BEFORE the Jankipuram land scam hit the headlines, another similar property racket in which green belt land was sold off on Kanpur Road was detected in the LDA but was subsequently hushed up.
As a result, while the perpetrators of the fraud were let off the hook— unlike the Jankipuram case in which 13 officials were suspended—attempts are now being made to brush the issue under the carpet by changing the land use. In fact, a proposal to this effect was mooted by a former BJP corporator, now a member of the LDA Board Govind Pandey saying that since the owners of these plots had constructed houses they should be regularised.
The proposal seeking conversion of this green belt land into residential and earmarking an equal area at a different place within the scheme as green in lieu of this was tabled before Tuesday’s LDA Board meeting but a decision on it was deferred.
Instead, the Board suggested that a two-member experts committee should first go through the complexity of the issue and submit its findings on the basis of which a final decision would be taken. At stake are 184 sites and services plots, which were carved out of 2.57-acre stretch of green belt land in Sector-D of Kanpur Road housing scheme of the LDA. Out of these the LDA has already executed registries of 35 plots .
“The layout and lease plan on the basis of which these plots were allotted are all fake and were not prepared by our town planning section,” said LDA Chief Town Planner CP Sharma. The officials also cited the letter dated January 22, 2002 of the then LDA joint secretary SB Bharti in this connection stating that the lease in question was issued by the concerned engineering section.
The allotment files contain the signatures of the then LDA secretaries Rajiv Kumar Singh, RK Singh, joint secretary JC Adarsh, Upendra Nath Srivastava, Sahayak Nagar Adhikari Shitla Pal Singh and the assistant looking after the scheme DN Singh. It is however, yet to be established that the signatures of these officials like the layout and lease plans too have been forged. The moot question as to why the same authorities, who lost no time in suspending the 13 officials allegedly involved in the Jankipuram scam, are soft-pedaling on this issue.
