lokayukt Retd Justice NK Mehrotra finally sent a special report to the Governor regarding large-scale irregularities made in land use changes. The move was made by him reportedly after the State Government dumped his recommendations on the issue.
Sources said that Mehrotra had sent Special Report to Governor Ram Naik on Thursday evening requesting him to direct the State Government to put Action Taken Report (ATR) regarding recommendations made by him in connection with land use changes. The ATR is to be put on the floor of the State Assembly.
Mehrotra had already recommended a high-level probe into the large-scale irregularities made in land use changes, after a cursory glimpse of changes made in just last two years in some districts unearthed a loss of over 15 crore of rupees to the State exchequer and over a dozen PCS officers posted as SDM and even as senior officials in the revenue departments were found involved in it.
The probe would not just help to recover the loss revenue but also to punish over 100 of senior officers mostly of PCS cadre who were frequently making changes in tehesil records to facilitate builders and were making huge money out of it. The report was sent on Septemeber 15 last.
Mehrotra claimed that he had already dispatched a report to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav recommending to immediately form a high-level team of officials of Board of Revenue Department and of Economic Offence Wing (EOW), and probe the land use change made in all the districts of the State during last five years. He said that enquiry by him into land use changes just in last two years in some districts like Mathura, Agra, Ghaziabad and Barabanki revealed a total loss of more than 15.06 crores to the State exchequer in just last 2 years.
Mehrotra, who sees a huge loss to the State exchequer through stamp duty theft on registration of lands, revealed that in Ghaziabad, local authorities had facilitated the builders which costs Government more than Rs7 crore.
He said that during probe, he found that land use of several dozen of plots in Shahpur Mehta locality, have been changed from agriculture land to residential areas, citing that the area has been already developed by the builders and that in town plan for 2021, the land has been allocated for residential areas. However, much to his surprise, on April 1 last year, the same land use has been once again changed to agriculture.
He claimed that the probe showed that all the rules were mended to facilitate one Saurya Construction, a leading real estate company. According to Mehrotra, the estimated loss to the State exchequer by just above one company comes to over Rs7.13 crore. He said that if further enquiry would be made, this loss might be running into several more crores of rupees.