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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Court seeks Bihar reply on ‘preferential' land allotments by Shoumojit Banerjee

Court seeks Bihar reply on ‘preferential' land allotments by Shoumojit Banerjee

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published Published on Oct 20, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 20, 2011

To top bureaucrats, wards of Ministers

The Patna High Court has ordered the Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority to reply immediately to petitions alleging preferential allocation of prime government land at sub-par rates to top-ranking bureaucrats and wards of Ministers in the Nitish Kumar government.

A Division Bench of the Court comprising Justices T. Meena Kumari and Vikas Jain directed the Authority to answer the petitions filed by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) legislator Satish Paswan, former Samata Party leader P. K. Sinha and activist Sarwar Warsi.

The petitioners have urged the court for a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into preferential allotments of prime government land without “tender and advertisement,” which they allege has cost the State exchequer thousands of crores of rupees.

The affair had taken the State Assembly by storm during the monsoon session in July, compelling Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to conduct an internal inquiry into the matter over protests by the RJD.

The 18-page report presented by the government in less than a week had categorically refuted any flouting of norms as laid by the BIADA (Financial, Technical) Regulation, 2007, with Mr. Kumar upbraiding the Opposition for fabricating “an artificial crisis” which was hampering the creation of a conducive investment atmosphere in the State.

“This so-called investigation was a mockery in the truest sense of the term, with the then Chief Secretary Anup Mukherjee conducting the affair on telephone and clearing those in question,” counsel for the petitioners Dinu Kumar told The Hindu .

Mr. Dinu Kumar said the crux of the issue was why the BIADA Act of 1974 was amended by the government in December 2007 to rule out the necessity of tendering and advertising the bidding of government land.

“The amended BIADA norms simply facilitate nepotism and are in utter violation of the spirit of the 1974 Act,” he said.

The government's inquiry report, present on its website, lists the allotment details of eight such persons with respect to the land allotment dates, project clearance dates and rates of purchase, while further attesting that none of the persons in question had been granted special favours and that land in different areas had been accorded them at rates fixed by the Authority.

Among them are Rahmat Fatima, daughter of Social Welfare Minister Parveen Amanullah and senior civil servant Afzal Amanullah; Urvashi Shahi, daughter of Human Resource Development Minister P.K. Shahi; Rahul Sharma, son of MP Jagdish Sharma; Saurabh Agarwal, son of Bharatiya Janata Party MLC Ashok Agarwal; and S. Siddharth, secretary to the Chief Minister.

The Court has set January 17 as the date for further hearing.


The Hindu, 21 October, 2011, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2557649.ece


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