Fourteen long days after the head of a three-member Taskforce, appointed to probe all allotments of Government land and houses under the discretionary quota (DQ) in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack since 1995, Additional Chief Secretary (Revenue) Taradatt claimed to have submitted the eagerly-awaited report to the Government, the Urban Development Department says it is yet to get the report.
“My department is yet to receive the report. I am hopeful that the Taskforce will submit its report within the assigned time,” said Housing and Urban Development Minister Pushpendra Singh Deo on Friday, barely hours after Dr Taradatt had told the media that he had submitted the report as far as on October 31.
Whom exactly did the Taskforce submit its reportIJ And why has it taken two weeks for the report to reach the concerned Housing and Urban Development DepartmentIJ One could travel half the world and come back to base in the time that the report has taken to traverse the few hundred metres within the same building!
The Minister’s discomfiture when confronted by mediapersons on the issue was apparent, symptomatic of the unease in the whole Government on the question of discretionary quota.
“Once we get the report, we would ‘review’ its findings and then take action accordingly,” said Singh Deo. His comment indicates that the Taskforce’s report does not exactly show the Government in shining colours as it is likely to embarrass dome big shots in the Government and the ruling BJD.
“The Government is embroiled in the land scam right from its very start. It had formed the Taskforce to get itself cleared in the scam. Since 14 days have already elapsed since the report has been submitted to the Government, why is the Government not making it public,” questioned senior BJP leader Bijay Mohapatra.
On August 2 this year, a shaken Government had formed the Taskforce to go into the indiscriminate allotment of land and houses under the DQ in the wake of a hue and cry following damning disclosures made in the CAG report pointing out indiscriminate allotments made to senior BJD leaders. The terms of reference, later framed for the Taskforce and announced on August 12, required it to probe all allotments under the DQ from January 1, 1995 to July 31, 2014.
The Taskforce was asked to probe all allotments of land, flats and houses in the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack urban areas under the DQ, besides allotment of more than one unit of land/plot/flat to members of the same family.