BJP demands judicial inquiry in Visakhapatnam lands scam

BJP, ally of the ruling TDP in Andhra Pradesh, has demanded a judicial inquiry in the Visakhapatnam lands scam.
The SIT constituted by the government will not yield any result unless it has a judicial officer, P Vishnukumar Raju, BJP's AP Assembly floor leader told reporters here today.
He said "nobody knows why the government cancelled public inquiry on June 15. If a public inquiry had been conducted, number of complaints could have come up before the collectorate."
"The Government had not shown any seriousness on the complaints placed before it on Visakhapatnam lands issue six months back," Raju said.

"If the Government had taken action at that time, the issue could not have assumed such serious proportions," he said.
Raju said "He had himself raised the land grabbing and records tampering issue many times on the floor of the house but the Government failed to act."

The BJP leader said government lands were shown as private lands and sold by the real estate agents in some cases.
He said that in other cases, the records of private lands were tampered and bogus registrations were also done.
Raju said in many cases innocent poor and illiterate were cheated by tampering of land records, while in some cases, illegal registrations were done without the knowledge of land owners and now these real owners are facing cases either in courts or in police stations.

Raju claimed that these activities had started from 2009.
He alleged that the scamsters have blessings of political leaders.