Mumbai:
The government in Maharashtra, jointly run by the Congress and Sharad Pawar's NCP, appears to have much to answer for. A new report by the government's auditor faults 10 senior politicians in the state and many others for gifting land at hefty discounts to trusts associated with them or their families. Headlining the list is former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
"Wait till the 16th when the government is likely to table the report. Then I may react," said Mr Deshmukh who is now a union minister. The BJP has asked for his resignation with its spokesperson stating that Mr Deshmukh has lost the right to remain in office.
The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) says that as Chief Minister in 2005, Mr Deshumkh allotted a massive plot of land in Mumbai to the Manjara Charitable Trust, which is run by his family. The land was worth Rs 30 crores, but it was given to the trust at a fifth of the price for a dental college. Many years have passed without any sign of that college, prompting the suggestion that the deal was a simple case of land-grabbing. "It was noticed that out of four applicants for the plot, the chief minister approved application of the Manjara charitable trust in preference to the other three applicants without assigning any specific reason for the preferential allotment," says the report, according to the Press Trust of India.
Mr Deshmukh was only yesterday indicted by the Supreme Court for misusing his office to gift 21 acres of land to movie-maker Subhash Ghai for a film academy.
The report has yet to be officially shared by the government -that will happen on April 16, said the chief minister. But its contents were leaked first by the opposition BJP, and then confirmed by independent sources.
The CAG report also states NCP leader and Public Works Minister Chaggan Bhujbal gave two plots of land in Nashik, worth several crores, to a trust run partly by his nephew, Sameer. The land was meant for use by his own ministry. Its distribution to his nephew's trust is seen by the report as a conflict of interest. The report states that the finance department of the government had reportedly pointed out that the prices agreed to were unfairly low.
Sugar baron Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil is the state's Agricultiure Minister. His foundation received land in Pune in 1988 for setting up a secondary education institute. Of that land, a big part was reallocated for higher and technical education in 2002 for 17 lakhs, a price calculated bizarrely according to the market rates in 1983 and not at the rates of 1997 which should have been done. The government lost more than 70 lakhs as a result.
The CAG report also finds that several politicians helped themselves to flats built on government-owned land in Mumbai's Andheri area by lying about their incomes. 11 politicians of the state gave affidavits declaring income much lower than perhaps what meets their status, ranging from Rs 2,500 to Rs 12,500 per month.