Delhi Assembly Petitions Committee has summoned former Secretary (Services) Ashish More to appear on Wednesday in connection with land transfer fraud allegations. The Committee has also asked Delhi Chief Secretary and Divisional Commissioner to be present in the meeting.
Last year, five sub divisional magistrates and one additional district magistrate namely Ajit Thakur , Harshit Jain, Devender Sharma , PC Thakur, Nagender Tripathi, Nitin Jindal were suspended for the same land transfer fraud in Jhangola Village.
“Delhi Chief Secretary, Divisional Commissioner, Ashish More have been summoned to appear on Wednesday at Petitions Committee,” sources said.
According to sources, More used the same method to transfer the same type of land in the same Village. Evacuee Property belonging to government was illegally transferred and people given Bhumidhari rights.
“More being DM North District decided the appeals where illegal land transfers were made. The files asked by the Petition Committee have not been submitted before the Committee, seven days time is over,” sources added. AAP MLA Bhawna Gaur has also forwarded a complaint against More to Delhi Assembly speaker Ram Niwas Goel on May 24. The complainant has alleged that More while posted as District Magistrat (North Collector) has been involved in corruption activities and has committed grave irregularities in deciding two cases.
The records of rights in respect of the agriculture land falling in village Jhangola, Delhi is government/maintained by Punjab Land Revenue Act. The Delhi Land Reforms Act is not applicable to land falling in Jhangola which is declared as evacuee property by the Centre.
Accusing More, the complainant said that he deliberately overlooked the fact that sale deed, mutation, cultivation, possession of land can not be undertaken in r/o the said custodian/government land.
“Disposing all the appeal cases, More then District Magistrate (North) failed to discharge his official duties in accordance with law and against the government interest in as much as check the status of khasra from the revenue department while he was duty bound to do so,” the complainant said.
The Ministry of Home Affairs had already started disciplinary action against five SDM and one ADM in this regard.
According to Delhi government sources, all the four officials had, while occupying the office of SDM, Alipur, over the years, allegedly engaged in illegal sale of small parcels of land whose original owner had migrated to Pakistan during Partition, The four officials — Harshit Jain, DANICS, Prakash Chand Thakur, ad hoc DANICS, Nagender Shekhar Pati Triapthi, DANICS, and Devender Sharma, ad hoc DANICS — had, during their tenure as SDM, Alipur, passed orders giving away ownership of government land “in criminal connivance with private individuals or entities” for apparent “pecuniary benefits in return”.
More was removed by the AAP dispensation last week within hours of the Supreme Court ruling that matters related to the transfer of bureaucrats serving in the city lies under the domain of the city's elected government. More's removal had snowballed into a controversy with him allegedly refusing to comply with the order and also allegedly going incommunicado.
