 "Cong members also demand probe into multi-crore licensing scam")
Rivals of Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda have latched on to allegations of irregularities in land licensing made by senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka demanding thorough investigation into the matter. While rivals Bharatiya Janata Party and Indian National Lok Dal focused on the land deals of Congress president’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, some congress party members have gone a step ahead and said there should be investigation into all “change of land use” done over the past eight years.
Rao Inderjit Singh, the Congress Lok Sabha member from Gurgaon, has demanded "a thorough probe" not only into the Vadra deal but all such deals.
Speaking to Business Standard, he said, “ The case pertaining to Robert Vadra land deal is related to very small piece of land. During the period 2006-2012, around 21, 000 acres of agricultural land were given to builders, institutions at throwaway price and also granted change in land use. There should be thorough probe into these alleged transfer of land and the guilty should be punished. “
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Khemka in his submission had put the value of land licensing scam in Haryana to be anywhere between Rs 20,000 crore and Rs 3.5 lakh crore.
Taking the gains made by Vadra’s firm Skylight Hospitality as the benchmark, Khemka calculated the illegal gains per acre to be over Rs 15 crore and extrapolated this to all colony licences issued during the Hooda regime.
The Department of Town & Country Planning issued various types of colony licenses for a total of 21,366 acres in the last 8 years from 2005 to 2012. The licenses granted from the year 2005 to 2012 constitute 71.5% of the total area licensed from 1981 to 2012. The rate of grant of colony license during the period from 2005 to 2012 was seven and a half times the corresponding rate during the period from 1981 to 2004. “Assuming an average market premium of Rs 15.78 crores per acre for colony license as in the present case, we may be looking at a land-licensing scam of nearly Rs 3.5 lakh crore of rupees during the last eight years,” according to Khemka.
The DTCP has termed the allegations as “wrong” and “misleading.”
“Even if the market premium for colony license is assumed to be as low as one crore rupees per acre, the land-licensing scam in the last eight years is worth at least 20,000 crores of rupees. The worth of the land-licensing scam in the last eight years could be any figure in the range between 20,000 and 3,50,000 crores of rupees.”
As per its balance sheet as at 31.03.2011, the total cost to Sky Light Hospitality Private Limited for purchase of land including stamp duty and commercial license fees was Rs 15.38crore. The net profit accruing to Sky Light Hospitality Private Limited due to the grant of commercial license for 2.701 acres and the permission accorded by the DTCP to sell the license to DLF Universal was Rs 42.61crore, after accounting for all expenses, the bureaucrat, who had initially cancelled the deal, alleged.
Khemka also alleged that this profit accrued to the Company without any value addition. “Even if it is assumed that the premium for the commercial colony license was not shared in other forms with other middlemen, which is unlikely, the market premium on commercial license works out to a minimum of Rs 15.78 crores per acre.”