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Troubles has started brewing up for the Railways Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal’s family, as after Vijay Singla, his father and brother-in-law of the minister, Mithan Lal Singla, known as very upright person in his friends circle is under the scanner.
A Public Interest Litigation in the Punjab and Haryana High Court has revealed preferential allotment of land measuring 21.26 acres in Derabassi in Punjab to Mithan Lal and two others at throwaway price.
This came to light from a public interest petition filed in the Punjab & Haryana High Court in August last year, which came up for resumed hearing on Tuesday. The PIL was filed by Ajitgarh(Punjab)-based Harshinder Singh, through Chandigarh-based advocate Navkiran Singh.
The PIL revealed that that a trio namely Mithan Lal Singla, Chetan Singla and Sandeep Gupta are businessmen and owners of twin companies namely ‘JTL (Jagan Tubes Ltd.) Infra Ltd.’ and ‘Mirage Infra Ltd.’. The said two companies are into the business of small-scale manufacturing and trading in tubes, etc. and the development of real estate respectively and therefore profit making business houses.
Further it states that they though having no previous experience, history, track record of contribution and participation in the field of education, converged to form a trust namely “JTL Educational Foundation” (hereinafter referred to as Trust) vide a registered deed dated April 2010 with an intention to collude with the Gram Panchayat of Dera Bassi in Punjab and government functionaries in order to grab its 21.26 acres of Panchayat land, urban in nature.
That merely after the lapse of 15 days from formation of the trust, one of the trustees namely Chetan Singla submitted an application dated April, 2010 to Gram Panchayat seeking an allotment of 21.26 acres of Panchayat land in Derabassi area on lease for 33 years for the establishment of institutions in furtherance of implementation of the programs envisaged in the trust deed.
The said application was moved by the trustees by their own and not in response to any previously publicly notification by the Gram Panchayat by way of an advertisement in the newspapers or any other mode of publicizing.
Finally in October 2010, 21.26 acres of Panchayat land to be leased for 33 years to “JTL Educational Foundation” at the rate of Rs. 30,000 per acre lease money payable annually. Whereas, the settled and admitted market price of the said land is between Rs. 1.50 crores to Rs.5 crores, respectively.
