Pune:
A special committee probe has found that 30 acres of forest land worth Rs 1000 crore in Pune was sold to a private builder for mere Rs 2 crore. The probe report also claims that bureaucrats and politicians colluded with the builder to grab the land. The case is now in the Supreme Court.
The investigation started after an NGO, Nagrik Chetna Manch, filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court in 2007. The NGO wanted to know how a 30-acre forest land in the middle of Pune's most expensive real estate was sold to Richie Rich Cooperative for construction without the mandatory environmental clearance of the Centre.
The court ordered a Centrally Empowered Committee (CEC) probe that unravelled a huge land grab involving bureaucrats, and most damagingly Congress minister Narayan Rane, then in the Shiv Sena.
The probe shows the 30-acre plot was marked as forest land in multiple government surveys for over a hundred years till 2002.
In 1992, the District Collector sanctioned 3 acres as compensation to a displaced family of farmers - the Chavans.
Two years later in 1994, the Pune Divisional Commissioner surprisingly allotted the entire 30 acres to the Chavans for agricultural purposes only.
Yet even before the allotment letter arrived, the Chavans sold it to Richie Rich Cooperative for nearly Rs 2 crore - a neat profit.
The transactions show Richie Rich Cooperative could not have grabbed the land without the collusion of government officials. The CEC report says government officials connived for personal gain of developers.
Though the land had already changed hands, there was a key gap. Here, Narayan Rane, the then Revenue Minister in the Shiv Sena government, stepped in and cleared the allotment of forest land without the mandatory approval of the Centre. This happened in 1999.
In 2000, the then Pune Collector Vijay Mathankar issued a certificate stating the plot was a non-agricultural land. Deputy Conservator of Forest, Ashok Khadse, also certified it was a non-forest land. Both officials, now retired, were unavailable for comment.
On the basis of these motivated certificates, the builders hoodwinked the Union Ministry of Environment and got the mammoth project cleared to build 1,550 flats, three club houses, 32 row houses and a shopping centre.
When NDTV asked Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh why his ministry failed to detect the loopholes, he said, ''The Union Ministry of Environment & Forests is currently seized of the matter and is inquiring into it.''
The Centrally Empowered Committee in its report says: The (then) Revenue Minister of Maharashtra took the decision to favour the private builders. But Rane, now the Industries Minister in Maharashtra, claims he was unaware that a builder took over the land. ''The land was handed over to the original cultivator initially for a year and then permanently. Cannot say what the cultivator did with the land. But the government did not sell the land to any builder,'' Rane said.
The builders - City Corporation Limited, Oxford Properties and Raheja Builders - together hold construction rights of Richie Rich Cooperative Society.
When NDTV contacted Aniruddha Deshpande, a major Pune developer who controls City Corporation, he said Oxford Properties would respond on behalf of Richie Rich Society.
''For the last 100 years, there is a record which reflects this land purely as revenue land. So there was no question of any kind of forest during so many years. And no objection of any kind from any department of the forest was ever received,'' said Anil Seolekar of the Oxford Properties.
The Centrally Empowered Committee, after hearing all parties, had ordered all construction to be suspended in 2009. It's now up to the Supreme Court to decide whether Pune can get back this valuable forest land.