The slugfest between Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) legislator and Chief Parliamentary Secretary NK Sharma and Punjab Congress spokesman Sukhpal Singh Khaira over murky land deals in Chandigarh periphery has refused to subside.
In another round, Sharma on Monday exposed a scandal worth several hundred crore rupees involving Punjab Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa, his brother and Congress general secretary Fatehjung Singh Bajwa, Khaira and their coterie usurping Shamlat land in connivance with officials during the tenure of erstwhile Congress Government.
This is not all! Sharma also issued a legal notice of Rs100 crore of civil and criminal defamation against Khaira for “causing harm to his and his company’s reputation”.
Maintaining that he would “trash” Sharma’s defamation notice, Khaira, on the other hand, came out with the “relevant” documents to prove his allegations of “gross violations in Sharma’s Savitri-I and II projects at Bishanpura and Gazipur in Zirakpur”.
Khaira also dared Sharma to ask the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to order a “fair and impartial” judicial probe.
Continuing with their allegations and counter-allegations against each other over the issue, Sharma fired another salvo on Khaira and Bajwas alleging them to be a part of “land mafia”.
“The modus-operandi of this land mafia is that they first got power of attorneys from different illegal occupants of shamlat lands authorizing them to pursue the cases at different levels and after getting registries done in the names of these illegal occupants, they got the land transferred to their names to sell it further,” said Sharma, while addressing a press conference on Monday afternoon.
He said that the land mafia, included a relative of Khaira, Fatehjung Bajwa, his sons Kanwarpartap Singh and Sukhmani Fateh Singh, his wife Hanila Bajwa, besides PCB Real Estate Private limited - of which Bajwa and his family members are directors, and others, pay a meager amount to the illegal occupants, while keeping a handsome amount of money.
Sharma substantiated his claims with documentary evidence including revenue records and copies of power of attorneys.
Accompanying him, Kartar Singh from Dad village in ludhiana district with his relatives alleged that Fatehjung Bajwa and his exchanged the land at Bharojian village with their plot at Delhi with them and got the deed registered in their name but till date, they have not given them the possession.
“A cheque of Rs 21 lakh of ICICI Bank issued in name of Kartar Singh on February 25, 2011 has also bounced whose payment is being withheld by the Bajwa couple,” they added.
Training his guns at Khaira, Sharma said: “It is strange that Khaira’s assets zoomed by 2282 per cent from Rs 2.21 crore in 2007 to Rs 52.66 crore in 2012 as per the declarations filed by him during filing of nomination papers during assembly polls of 2007 and 2012.”
Reiterating that all projects under NK Sharma Group of Companies have been initiated after getting due clearances from authorities concerned, Sharma said that the allegations leveled by Khaira against him were only “aimed to create a fear factor in the minds of investors who want to make investments in the state”.
“I have served a legal notice through my counsel Anil Mehta for civil and criminal defamation of Rs 100 crores to Sukhpal Khaira for causing harm to me and my company’s reputation, giving him a period of seven days to withdraw his statement, failing which I would pursue the legal remedy,” said Sharma.
Refuting Sharma’s allegations as “nothing but a cock and bull story”, Khaira said that he had produced latest revenue record, dated October 11, 2013, wherein he was the sole owner of nine kanal-10 marla of Kidiana village near Adampur. “The said land is purchased by me in 1998 for Rs 2.5 lakhs and there is no encroachment by me, as alleged by Sharma,” he added.
On Sharma’s defamation notice, Khaira said that he would “trash so-called defamation notice, as he has cheated thousands of investors in his housing project, as they are without mandatory environment clearance required under the notification dated September 14, 2006, issued by Union Ministry of Environment and Forest”.
Challenging Sharma to convince his Chief Minister to order a fair and impartial probe by asking Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, to nominate a sitting Judge for this purpose, Khaira said: “let there be a transparent enquiry against leaders of all political parties, bureaucrats and powerful police officers including state DGP Sumedh Saini, who has illegally got mutation of 32 kanal land of ‘Gair Mumkin Nadi’ (ribulet) in his favour as established by the Justice (retired) Kuldip Singh Tribunal appointed by the High Court.”