Apprehension of lokayukt Retd Justice NK Mehrotra, probing large scale loss to state exchequer through stamp duty on registration of lands in Mathura, that more districts were involved in similar scam turned out to be true when just last two years report from some other districts revealed loss of several crore rupees to the government.
Mehrortra hope that in lucknow too, the report of which would be submitted by Friday, a large scale of fraud in land change use would be detected as the builders mushroomed in all the highways connecting the state capital. Mehrorta had made the above move after he smelled similar syndicate operative in many other big cities and claimed to extend his enquiry to many other districts included Gautambudhnagar, Ghaziabad, lucknow, Kanpur etc.
Interestingly, several senior IAS officers were manning the Revenue Department, the nodal agency to check revenue loss to the State government but dispite of probe pointing towards it and several news item already published in news papers of how a syndicate is operative in land use change, but still no cognizance have been taken in the matter. Mehrotra claimed that he will brought the matter in the knowledge of chief minister, and would made recommendation to constitute a high level probe into the matter. ``If such syndicate comprising of builders, revenue department and registry office could freely operate in district like Mathura, than one could easily sense that how the big land sharks and multinational real estate companies are using the land use change as a lethal weapon to dupe the government by saving revenue stamp charges on registry of lands”, disclosed Mehrorta here on Thursday afternoon. He said that the report from Ghaziabad confirmed that 9 major cases involving builders like Ms Ambassdor, Ms Amazon, Ms Aznara, Ms Crossing, Ms Panchsheel, Ms New Capital, Ms Shaurya Towers etc, all big real estate companies, had connived with the local authorities to capitalise on land use change thus resulting to loss of several crore rupees to state exchequer.
Similarly he said that Agra submitted that 5 such cases were made during last two years in Khairabad and Airawali thesils. likewise,Barabanki administration claimed that 19 land use change has been made just in Haidergarh and Nawabganj which resulted into huge loss to government revenue. He claimed that while lucknow would send it’s report by Friday, the administration in Kanpur and Gautambudhnagar (Nodia) yet not completed the findings and seek more time. He claimed that once all districts submit their report, he would go through them and later submit a report to the chief minister, recommending to take further action so that culprits should be brought to books and the loss of revenue to the government could be recovered.
It may be mentioned that Mehrotra had summoned the record of last two years from Noida, lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Barabanki etc to confirm how many case of land change use from `Abadi’ (living Area) to `Krishi’ (agriculture land), to save stamp duty charges have been made. He claimed that in living areas the registry have been made on prevalent circle rate but in agriculture land registration, the same would be made at per bigha which is very low so the builders and officials at thesil office capitalise on land use change by showing the property as for agriculture use. Sources said that in the Mathura case, Mehrotra, who summoned the record of last three years had received files related to 31 cases of land uses but he suspect that the real picture has yet not emerged. ``Mehrotra had now sent a letter to AIG Registration in Mathura, directing him to confirm whether just the cases sent by district magistrate regarding land use changes exist on papers or more such incidents happened in last three years but the truth has been concealed”, added the source.