Bijay Mohapatra demands CBI probe into deal
Accusing Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik of shielding his Ministers and other BJD leaders, other influential persons and bureaucrats involved in the land and house allotment scam, senior BJP leader Bijay Mohapatra on Tuesday demanded a CBI probe into the entire deal.
Addressing a Press conference here, he dubbed Patnaik as the “architect in the land and house scam“, which, he said, is going the chit fund scam way.
While Patnaik, in order to cover up the chit fund scam to protect his men, had taken the Crime Branch route unsuccessfully, in the case of house and land scam he has resorted to a Taskforce route shamelessly for suppression of the entire scandal, Mohapatra alleged.
In a dig at the Chief Minister, he said, “You remained silent over the chit fund scam and even now do not make any public statement on the land and house scam despite CAG has named Ministers in its report. While your opposition to a CBI probe in the multi-crore chit fund scam did not succeed in the Supreme Court at a huge expense of public money to the tune of Rs 50 lakh by employing highly-paid lawyers, the land scam will also meet with the same fate. So, don’t create a drama by forming a taskforce. Instead, hand over the case to CBI to unearth the whole truth,” said Mohapatra.
Questioning the morality and legality of forming the taskforce to inquire into the Government land and house allotment deal, he said that since Patnaik, who has been heading the GA Department and all the final allocation of land to politicians and others by showing favouritism without maintaining transparency as indicted by the CAG, he is the main accused. “How could an accused constitute a taskforce and sit in judgement,” he asked.
Referring to the CAG’s document that the Chief Minister was in the know of the entire fraudulent deal and his office did not cooperate during the auditing process despite seeking of compliance information twice in June and July, Mohapatra lamented that Patnaik tried to suppress the matter when the CAG drew his attention in 2012 to the irregularities in the allotment of Government land and houses to influential people and land mafia.
The Chief Minister was informed when the GA Department and the Bhubaneswar Development Authority did not hand over the files required by the CAG audit team despite the Chief Secretary being approached in this regard. The Chief Minister tried to suppress the report from March 2012 and did not comply with many queries or supply information despite repeated reminders from the audit agency, Mohapatra said.
“The AG finally informed the Deputy Director General of CAG in Delhi who wrote a letter to the Chief Minister in October 2012 for his personal intervention in the matter, but in vain. It is rare in Odisha’s history that the Constitutional body CAG’s repeated request to the Chief Minister for relevant records were not complied with,” he said, adding that even till July 4 this year the CM did not give any information relating to the deal in writing to the CAG.
“Mr CM, you have no face. Your face has been blackened as your affidavit in the Supreme Court that involvement of no Minister or other politicians of the ruling party surfaced in the Crime Branch investigation proved totally negative by the CBI in the chit fund scam,” Mohapatra remarked.
Taking exception to the return of houses and plots by BJD leaders after being caught for possessing more than one house under the discretionary quota and in violation of rules, Mohapatra sarcastically said that while lands and plots should go for public auction, the Government was too kind to allow them return them as if the houses were given away as gifts. “It is quite possible that the Government may one day flee to Delhi after leasing out the State Secretariat,” he remarked.