CAG indicts ministers for land misuse

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has in a report named education institutes promoted by five politicians including two former chief ministers for misusing government land.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has in a report named education institutes promoted by five politicians including two former chief ministers for misusing government land.

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The country’s top accounting body also rapped the Maharashtra government for offering unwarranted favours to Lavasa Corporation’s Rs 2,800-crore hill city residential project near Pune.

The report, tabled in the legislature on Tuesday, indicted institutes run by the family or close aides of former chief ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh (now union minister) and Narayan Rane (now state industries minister), PWD minister Chhagan Bhujbal, forest minister Patan-grao Kadam and agriculture minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil on charges of land misuse.

They are accused of acquiring plots at discounted rates from the government for educational purposes and changing the use of the land for commercial gains. The Manjra Charitable Trust, controlled by Deshmukh, has been mentioned in the report for getting 23,840 square metre land in Borivli at Rs 6.56 crore in September 2005. The current market value of the land is Rs 30.37 crore.

The report said the application for allotting land to the trust for a dental college was approved without assigning reasons for preferential treatment by then CM Deshmukh. Adarsh: What next?

BJP legislator Devendra Fadnavis had tabled parts of the report in the legislature more than week ago and also given CDs containing the leaked report to the media, triggering strong political reactions.

On Lavasa, the CAG said private and not public interest had propelled the regulations framed and amendments made to laws and procedures.

The report also observed that the city’s Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital and Research Centre, which got ownership/trusteeship of the hospital transferred without informing the government, was liable to pay the state Rs 174.88 crore.