In Manesar Land Scam, Paper Trail Reveals The Math May Be Wrong

Manesar (Haryana): Two hours from Delhi, in Manesar, a sprawling cluster of farmland and industrial townships, 52-year-old Om Prakash, meets us in his farm.

He, and farmers like him, are at the core of charges, being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), against former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

The allegation is that the state government first ordered acquisition of 688 acres of land from farmers like Om Prakash for building an industrial township, but then dithered, allowing private builders to buy land from them under pressure, at lower prices.

NDTV sifted through the paper trail to find a more complex picture.

Land acquisition notifications issued by the state government between 2004 and 2007 accessed by NDTV suggest that the process was prolonged for close to four years.
 In August 2007, just two days before the government was about to announce its rate, the decision to acquire land was abruptly stopped by a notification, also reviewed by NDTV.

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In the interim, as the government seemingly dithered, 400 acres of land was picked up by private builders, mostly by a company called ABW infrastructure Limited.

Om Prakash said, "We felt we will get very low rates for our land from the government. Despite several protests, the government never heard us. Left with no choice we had to sell our land to private builders who gave us a slightly better rate then."

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What was that rate? "I sold my 1.5 acres of my land in March 2005 and got 17 lakh 96 thousand from builders."

The farmers claim that land next to theirs, not earmarked for acquisition, sold at much higher rates, close to Rs 4 crores an acre.

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It is this bench mark on the basis of which the CBI is probing a claim of a 'scam' of Rs 1500 crores.

But government documents accessed by NDTV show that the circle or government rates of the Manesar land never crossed 30 lakhs per acre in all the years land was being acquired.

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The circle rate for 2004-05, the year the notification was issued was 7.7 lakhs per acre. It rose to 10 lakhs per acre next year, 15 lakhs per acre in 2006-07 and finally reached 30 lakhs per acre in 2007-2008.

Sources in district commissioners office say that  market rates are never more than 40% of the circle rate, irrespective of whether the land is industrial, commercial or residential, which means land under dispute would on an average have not been more than Rs30 lakh an acre.

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Sale deeds studied by NDTV show builders paid figures ranging from 25 lakh to 80 lakh an acre.
The CBI says it is still examining whether the 'scam' is worth Rs1,500 crores, but says that even so, it does not let the former Haryana Chief Minister off the hook.

They say that that he has yet to explain why the chief minister's office ignored complaints by farmers , as well as the State Industrial Corporation over the acquisition process, and  why the Town and Planning Department, which the chief minster held, issued change of land use licences to private builders when the acquisition process was still not completely called off.

Mr Hooda refused to come on the record, but sources close to him say that he withdrew the government's land acquisition notification because he did not want to demolish houses of protesting farmers. Since the acquisition had lapsed, those sources said, builders were free to change land use, from agricultural to commercial or residential.