CBI FILES CHARGES AGAINST HOODA, 33 OTHERS IN MANESAR LAND CASE
PANCHKULA: Senior Congress leader and former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, three of his former aides, and a number of real estate firms were charged on Friday with criminal conspiracy, fraud and corruption by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a decade-old case alleging a land scam in Manesar and other villages in Gurgaon.
The 80,000-page document names ML Tayal, who was principal secretary during the Hooda-led Congress regime (2005-09); Chhatar Singh, who was then an additional principal secretary and also served on the Union Public Service Commission; and SS Dhillon, the then director for town and country planning, among the 34 accused.
The scam, said to be worth ~1,500 crore, is about misuse of the Land Acquisition Act. The charge sheet says the state government in 2005 announced the acquisition of 912 acres of land for facilities in the Industrial Model Township (IMT), Manesar. It claims that this led to distress sale of about 400 acres to builders by farmers who were worried that the government would pay them next to nothing for the land.
The government scrapped its plans to acquire the land soon after, says the charge sheet, leaving the builders with the land.
It subsequently granted licences for housing and commercial development to them.
Soon after coming to power in the state in 2015, the BJP government ordered an investigation by CBI.
Investigating officers, who asked not to be named, said the charge sheet accuses Hooda of conspiring with his aides and realtors operating in Delhi and Gurgaon — among them Atul Bansal, the director of ABW Infrastructure Limited, who was allegedly the biggest beneficiary — to cause loss to the landowners and benefit private firms.
Besides Bansal, over a dozen realtors are on the list of accused, besides Jaswant Singh, the then district town planner (headquarters).
CBI judge Jagdeep Singh on Friday directed the agency to submit all documents related to the charge sheet, which was brought to court in two cupboards, to be submitted by February 26.