Thehelka has come out with a Story as a follow up of its earlier report on the nexus between Land mafia and Politicians in Maharashtra.
Close on the heels of the irrigation scam , comes the report that Prithviraj Chavan , the present CM scrapped a plethora of questionable deals amounting to 72000 crore(55+12=4089)
Some of the deals were signed just few hours before Ashok Chavan remitted office ,as a result of Adarsh Scam.
Point of interest is that the Congress is in cahoots with NCP and they can not afford to adopt the ‘Holier Than Thou’ attitude.
Reminds you of 2 G, DMK and Congress!
“Excerpts from the story:
Former Chief Minister, Maharashtra
As revenue minister, gifted 102 acres in the heart of Pune to a private builder for a mere 4,058. Actual worth of the land: Rs 2,500 crore
2. Sharad Pawar
Union Agriculture Minister
Tech Park One, a company owned by Pawar’s family and close friends acquired defence land for 7 crore. Its market value: Rs 70 crore
3. Vilasrao Deshmukh
Rural Development And Panchayati Raj Minister
A CAG report indicted Vilasrao for illegally allotting a 2 lakh sq m plot at throwaway prices to the Vilasrao Deshmukh Foundation, a trust run by Deshmukh and his family
4. Ajit Pawar
Deputy Chief Minister, Maharashtra
Gave away 2 lakh sq ft of land to AG Mercantile. It later emerged that Ajit Pawar had owned 8,800 shares of the company when 2G scam accused Vinod Goenka was its director
5.Supriya Sule
Lok Sabha MP
Along with her husband, Supriya holds substantial stakes in multi-billion-dollar real estate projects. Has a stake in Tech Park One, which constructed Panchsheel Tech Park on a defence plot, earning an annual rent of Rs 27 crore
Photos (L To R): Shailendra Pandey, Deepak Salvi, Shailendra Pandey, Fotocorp
Though it’s still early days, Prithviraj seems to be charting his own course. In an informal discussion with a small group of journalists at his residence on 12 May, he expressed his dismay with the way the multi-billion rupee Dharavi slum rehabilitation project was structured by his predecessor, Ashok Chavan.
“We have over half-a-dozen town planning and housing government agencies in this city,” said Prithiviraj. “I don’t understand why we should hand over precious public land to private developers when we ourselves can do the rehabilitation and redevelopment work. The government will stand to earn hundreds of crores of rupees from the land that would otherwise go into the pockets of private builders.”
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Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, is spread over 500 acres in the heart of Mumbai. Out of the 500 acres, 150 acres has already been redeveloped. But the redevelopment proposal of the remaining 350 acres has been in limbo for the past 15 years, primarily because both the builders and politicians are wrangling over their share of the spoils.
The government owns almost 80 percent of this land (75 percent belongs to the state government and the rest to the Central government). The government files show that after relocating more than 60,000 families living on this 350 acres, at least 4.35 crore sq ft of built-up area will be available for sale in the free market. According to a very conservative estimate (based on a projection made by a government official and is part of the official file), the private developers will stand to earn a gross revenue of more than Rs 26,000 crore. The market estimates put the figure in excess of Rs 50,000 crore……
ON MAY 7, Prithviraj scrapped two special township projects worth over 12,500 crore that had been awarded by Ashok Chavan to private developers without inviting any competitive bidding. The projects were given clearance on the morning of 11 November 2010, just hours before Prithviraj was administered the oath.
Between 1-10 November, files related to these projects moved at an astonishing speed between half-a-dozen government departments before finally being sanctioned by Ashok Chavan just a couple of hours prior to Prithviraj’s oath ceremony.
Now Prithviraj has not only scrapped these two projects, he has also put another four integrated township projects — the cumulative worth of all the six projects is about 55,000 crore — awarded by Ashok Chavan and Vilasrao Deshmukh under review. All these six projects were approved arbitrarily and without inviting any competitive bids or public tenders. (See the box on 3K).
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When contacted, Deshmukh told TEHELKA, “I don’t have the project files with me anymore. But what I can say is that the projects were sanctioned as per the rules.” Ashok Chavan refused to comment on the issue saying that the matter was sub-judice.
But if the Adarsh Housing Society scam was appalling, what will you do after reading the following disclosures?
On 9 January 2002, when Ashok Chavan was the revenue minister in Deshmukh’s government, he passed a “scandalous order” whereby he allegedly gifted away 102 acres in the heart of Pune to a private builder. The land was situated in one of Pune’s most posh localities, Senapati Bapat Road.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main49.asp?filename=Ne280511Coverstory.asp
Story and Photo Source: Tehelka