Records suggest that market value of the land bought by the BJP in Bihar is double the registered value.
Five days ago, 55-year-old Parshuram Chauhan in Bihar's Kishanganj claimed that he had sold one bigha land - about a quarter of an acre - to the state BJP unit for 70 lakhs.
Sales deeds of the deal transacted in September show that Mr Chauhan, in fact, sold two plots of land for Rs 35 lakh, one owned by him and another in his wife's name. Going by Mr Chauhan's assertion, the remaining Rs 35 lakh was received in unaccounted cash.
He now claims he was misquoted. "The media who came to take my comment behaved like it was a fish market. I only said Rs 17 lakhs, they heard 70 lakhs."
But why say 17 lakhs when he sold the two plots for Rs 35 lakhs? To this, Mr Chauhan had an even more surprising answer: "I have had a brain haemorrhage. So I sometimes forget things."
Mr Chauhan's land is one among many bought for office space by the BJP in Bihar between August and October this year, just before the Centre's note ban decision. Parties like Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janta Dal United hold it up as proof that the BJP was tipped off about the shock ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from November 8 - and was hurriedly dumping unaccounted wealth through these land deals.
The BJP says it paid the registered value for the land in Kishanganj through bank transfer, but the property document of one of the plots worth Rs 15 lakh shows that the amount was paid in "nakad" or cash.
The BJP says it can explain. "The unique transaction number... was taking time. So the property papers show that it was paid through cash," claims Dilip Jayaswal, lawmaker and the Bihar BJP's treasurer.
Land records suggest that the market value of the land bought by the BJP is double the registered value. "The government rates are very low. As per the market value, that plot of land should be around Rs 64 lakh," said real estate agent Mohd Safi.
The BJP said it had been looking for land for offices for a while and managed to swing a cheap deal only now. "We had been looking since January. We got low rates because the area has a lot of potholes and it is located next to a crematorium," says Rajeshwar Vaid, a BJP leader in Kishanganj.