BALCO land allotment wrong, prosecute CM, CS: Cong

Raipur, March 17, 2012

Terming regularisation of land allotted to Bharat Aluminium Company Limited (BALCO) in Korba illegal and done under planned conspiracy with an intention to dent the government exchequer, the Congress has held Chief Minister Raman Singh and former Chief Secretary (CS) P Joy Oommen responsible and demanded probe and prosecution against the duo under Prevention of Corruption Act. In this connection, a delegation of Congress leaders submitted a memorandum to Governor Shekhar Dutt on Saturday.

“BALCO had acquired land in advance admitting that the government reserves the right to fix the land rate,” said the Congress leaders.

“The Advocate General (AG) had advised the government not to take any decision on regularisation of land allotted to BALCO unless verdict of the relevant case pending with the High Court (HC) and Supreme Court (SC) comes. However, the government regularised the allotted lands despite the SC stay on felling of trees in the particular region, a sheer contempt of court,” they said.

“Though the HC verdict was in BALCO’s favour and it termed the occupied land legal, it also held for redressal of notices send by Revenue department regarding illegally occupied lands. Since both the verdicts were contradictory, the AG suggested the government to challenge them in SC. The government accepted AG’s advice and issued a directive in this regard,” they said.

“According to the Revenue department the government would get Rs 193 crore on full recovery, but now the recovery will limit to Rs 50 crore. In this connection, the advice of Revenue department was pending but the CM and the CS hastened for regularisation of lands.  For this, the government misused Business Rules 31 part (2) despite no emergency condition and in the backdrop of the case pending with the SC,” they said.

They cited SC hearing on civil appeal 1193/2012 in which it has said that any common man can demand for prosecution against any public servant if he/she has full documents and in this connection the competent authority must take decision according to verdicts of the apex court and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) guidelines. 

The Congress leaders said they sought Governor’s approval regarding prosecution against the CM because he was the competent authority.

The delegation of Congress comprised of PCC president Nandkumar Patel, CLP leader Ravindra Choubey, Satyanarayan Sharma, Bhupesh Baghel, legislators - Mohammad Akbar, Kawasi Lakhma, Dr Premsai Singh, Ramdev Ram, TS Singhdeo, Amarjeet Bhagat, Hridayram Rathiya, Shakrajeet Nayak, Padma Manhar, Bodhram Kanwar, Dharmjeet Singh, Mahant Ramsundar Das, Dr Haridas Bhardwaj, Paresh Bagbahra, Agni Chandrakar, Dr Shiv Kumar Daharia, Chaitram Sahu, Kuldeep Juneja, Rudra Kumar Guru, Amitesh Shukla, Ambika Markam, Lekhram Sahu, Gurmukh Singh Hora, Pratima Chandrakar, Bhajan Singh Nirankari, Tamradhwaj Sahu, Bholaram Sahu and Shivraj Singh Usare along with Ramesh Warlyani, Ganga Potai, Pradeep Choubey, Vidhan Mishra, Rajendra Tiwari, Shailesh Nitin Trivedi, Mahendra Chhabda, Sushil Anand Shukla and Amir Ali Farishta.