New Delhi:
A day after his second set of disclosures where he targeted BJP president Nitin Gadkari, activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal today said that "it is the tip of the iceberg".
"We have just started the process, it has to be taken forward," Mr Kejriwal told reporters in New Delhi.
Mr Kejriwal had on Wednesday accused Mr Gadkari of grabbing 100 acres of land from some of Maharashtra's poorest farmers in collaboration with Ajit Pawar, leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
The BJP is in the Opposition in Maharashtra, where the NCP-Congress coalition runs the government. But all political parties collude to loot the people, Mr Kejriwal said, accusing Mr Gadkari of thoroughly compromising his obligation as a Leader of the Opposition for illegitimate favours. "If an inquiry is done you'll find that all political parties are involved," he reiterated today.
Mr Gadkari had said yesterday, "This is a conspiracy to malign the BJP," adding that "land has been given on lease to a charitable trust which functions like a cooperative. It is not owned by me". He also said that sugarcane samplings are grown on the said land and sold at subsidised rates to farmers. "It's laughable to describe me as a businessman. I work for farmers. They are trying to defame me for their political gains," he said.
Mr Kejriwal says there is no evidence in the documents IAC has of the "social work" being done by Mr Gadkari. "The government didn't allot land for that purpose. The allotment doesn't say anything about public cause," he said.
Mr Kejriwal launched a political party earlier this month, a spin-off from the civil society group, India Against Corruption. Till Wednesday, they had been focusing on the alleged corruption of businessman Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Mr Pawar was forced to quit as Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra last month after allegations of a 70,000-crore irrigation scam on his watch erupted into a major controversy - the swindle centres on that money being spent on dams and canals that improved the state's irrigation ability by a negligible 0.1%.
The allegations by Mr Kejriwal added a new dimension to that scam. He said that the state acquired more land than needed for a dam in Umred, about 40 kms from Nagpur, in the region of Vidarbha, home to some of the poorest farmers in India. The rules require the government to return excess land to farmers - either by selling it back to them, or by leasing it to them. But instead, Mr Kejriwal says, in June 2005, Mr Gadkari wrote to Mr Pawar, asking for 100 acres of this unutilised land in Umred to be given to his company. At the time, Mr Gadkari was the president of the Maharashtra branch of the BJP.
Mr Kejriwal said that barely two weeks later, on 22 June, the nodal agency for irrigation in the region, the Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation (VIDC) agreed to Mr Gadkari's proposal for a 99-year lease. A senior bureaucrat pointed out this was illegal - that the irrigation department cannot lease or transfer land to private organizations. But he was over-ruled. The land was allegedly transferred to Mr Gadkari's firm in two tranches. The BJP said this was "wasteland", that all farmers had been compensated when their land was taken by the government, and that it was given with an 11-year lease for Rs. 70,000 per year to a trust.
Mr Kejriwal said that two activists - Anjali Damania and a woman identified as Preeti - spent a month exhuming documents that prove how land that was acquired from farmers in Vidarbha for the construction of dams was made available to private companies, in violation of the rules.
Ms Damania was sued by Mr Gadkari last month for defamation. Ms Damania, who is Right to Information (RTI) activist, devoted months to exposing the scam that played out when Mr Pawar served a decade-long term as Irrigation Minister. She says that in August, she met with the BJP president at his home in Mumbai and sought his help in taking on the NCP-Congress government. She says he refused, telling her that he has close links to Mr Pawar's uncle, Sharad Pawar, the head of the NCP and Union Agriculture Minister.
Mr Gadkari denies that he met Ms Damania.
Mr Kejriwal says that after being sued, Ms Damania began looking for evidence of the relationship between Mr Gadkari and Mr Pawar - and the results are what was shared on Wednesday.