Apprehension of lokayukta Retd Justice NK Mehrotra, who is probing large scale loss to State exchequer through stamp duty on registration of lands in Mathura, that more districts were involved in similar scams turned out to be true when just the last two years’ report from some other district revealed loss of several crores to the Government.
Mehrortra hopes that in lucknow too, the report of which would be submitted by Friday, a large scale of fraud in land change use gets detected as the builders have 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 districts, including 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 despite a probe pointing towards it and several news articles already published in newspapers of how a syndicate is operative in land use change, no cognisance have been taken in the matter. Mehrotra claimed that he will appraise the matter with the Chief Minister and would make recommendations to constitute a high-level probe into the matter.
“If such syndicate comprising builders, revenue department and registry office could freely operate in districts like Mathura, than one could easily sense how 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 nine major builders like Ms Ambassdor, Ms Amazon, Ms Aznara, Ms Crossing, Ms Panchsheel, Ms New Capital, Ms Shaurya Towers etc, had connived with the local authorities to capitalise on land use change, thus resulting to loss of several crores to the State exchequer.
Similarly, he said that Agra had submitted that five such cases were made during the last two years in Khairabad and Airawali tehsils. likewise, Barabanki administration claimed that 19 land use change has been made just in Haidergarh and Nawabganj which resulted into huge loss of Government revenue. He claimed that while lucknow would send its report by Friday, the administration in Kanpur and Gautambudhnagar (Nodia) has yet not completed the findings and seek more time. He claimed that once all districts submit their reports, he would go through them and submit a final report to the Chief Minister and recommend further action.
Mehrotra had sought the record of the last two years from Noida, lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Barabanki etc to confirm the number of cases of land change use from 'Abadi' (living Area) to 'Krishi' (agriculture land). He claimed that in urban areas registries have been made on prevalent circle rate but in agriculture land registration, the same is being made at per bigha rate which is very low so the builders and officials at the tehsil office can capitalise showing the property for agriculture use.
Sources said that in the Mathura case, Mehrotra, who had sought the record of the last three years, had received files related to 31 cases of land uses but he suspects 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 exist on papers or more such incidents have taken place in the last three years but the truth has been concealed", added the source.