Published On : Sat, Aug 24th, 2013

Massive scam in land records gets exposed as illegal layouts, plots craftily regularised

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Nagpur High Court slaps notices to the Revenue Secretary and the Land Records Commissioner and others to file their replies on September 25. The President of Nationalist Congress Yuva Party Vishal Khandekar has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the High Court following exposure of the scam by the media. The High Court notice and the alleged scam have created the ripples in Government circle and the citizens have been jolted to the core.

Nagpur News: The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court has issued notices to the top officials of the Land Records Office. The officials have allegedly been charged with committing a fraud by cunningly regularizing the unauthorized layouts and plots of lands in Nagpur thus pocketing crores of rupees. The High Court has issued notices to the Revenue Secretary and the Land Records Commissioner and has ordered them to submit their replies on September 25. The High Court notice and the alleged scam have created the ripples in Government circle and the citizens have been jolted to the core.

The President of Nationalist Congress Yuva Party Vishal Khandekar has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the High Court following exposure of the scam by the media. The media had revealed the massive scam involving top bosses of the Land Records Office in regularizing the layouts and plots of land by illegal means. The High Court has admitted the PIL and has made following persons as the parties in the lawsuit. The parties include a Clerk in Town Planning Department A K Fating, Nagpur, Town Planning Department’s Officer P V Jagtap, Aurangabad, K S Hattewar from Gadchiroli, G B Daberao from Amravati, and the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Anti-Corruption Bureau. The hearing on the PIL was made before the Judges of the High Court Justice Bhushan Dharmadhikari and Justice Atul Chandurkar. After the hearing, the High Court directed the parties to submit their replies on September 25.

According to the PIL, the concerned authorities indulged in massive changes in the layouts and plots of lands in the Ambajhari Layout, Zingabai Takli, Sitabuldi, Jaitala, Khamla, Ajni, Chinchbhuvan, Brahmani, Binaki, Harpur, and Katol in Nagpur city and district. However, in accordance with the Maharashtra Government’s Notification of July 15, 2005, the authority to make changes in the plots of lands lies with the District Collector only. But the then District Superintendent of Land Records Office S C Suryavanshi misused the District Collector’s powers and connived with the builder lobby and helped them, the PIL claimed. The concerned authorities recovered lakhs and lakhs from the citizens for making the changes and for making the layouts and the plots of lands in their names. The authorities even indulged in transferring an owner’s plot in the name of another person.

The Pune’s Jamabandi Ayukt (A jamabandi means “rights of records” and refers to Land Records Commissioner) had ordered an investigation against Suryavanshi through the Deputy Director. When the Deputy Director investigated the matter it came to notice that Suryavanshi had committed mammoth irregularities in the land records. The Deputy Director had submitted his report in this connection. However, shockingly, no action was initiated against Suryavanshi.

Advocate Shrikant Khandalkar, representing the petitioner, has, therefore demanded the High Court a high-level probe into the scam. It has also come to notice that the concerned authorities have resorted to major changes in the documents and sold the NIT plots, the sources said.