IAS officers among 16 suspended in Rs 4,721-cr Noida land scam

IAS officers among 16 suspended in Rs 4,721-cr Noida land scam
The Financial Express, August 11, 2009, Page 3

fe Bureaus, Lucknow

The Uttar Pradesh government on Monday suspended 16 officials, including three IAS officers, for their alleged involvement in the Rs 4,721-crore land allotment scam in Noida.

The land had been allotted by the then Mulayam Singh Yadav government to hoteliers for construction of hotels for the Commonwealth Games.

The suspension was ordered by chief minister Mayawati, who also directed that FIRs be lodged against the officers and legal proceedings initiated.

All the three IAS officials are former chief executive officers who headed the area development authority during 2006-07.

They are Rakesh Bahadur, Sanjeev Saran and Ravindra K Nair, who had been posted as additional CEO during the period of the scam.

Additional Cabinet secretary Vijay Shanker Pandey told mediapersons that the scam was related to allotment of lucrative hotel plots to certain parties in violation of rules.

Stating that the scam was responsible for causing the state exchequer a whopping loss of Rs 4,721 crore, he said that all allotments were cancelled as soon as the irregularities were detected.

In an effort to attract capital investment in the tourism industry, the Uttar Pradesh tourism department had unveiled the hotel policy in 2006.

The Noida authority board identified 25 plots in sectors 96, 97 and 98 for setting up three, four and five-star hotels.

Of the 31 applications received for allotment of plots, 14 plots were allotted for various categories of hotels in January 2007.

It was planned that these hotels would provide 5,000 rooms for the 2010 Games.

However, ever since the allotment of the plots, the issue was shrouded in controversy.

Two PILs were filed in the Allahabad High Court against these allotments, in which it was brought to the notice of the high court that the land allotment rate for these plots was Rs 7,400 per sq metre against a market rate of Rs 1,69,000 per sq metre, for which no tender was invited.

Once Mayawati returned to power in 2007, she immediately scrapped the hotel policy and ordered immediate cancellation of the plots. It was against this cancellation of allotment that the 14 hotel owners filed writs in the high court, which quashed the cancellation order of the plots and directed the state government to accord personal hearing to the plaintiffs and issue rational orders within six weeks.

However, after conducting the hearings, the state government found serious irregularities in the allotments and a decision was taken on Sunday to suspend the officials involved in the scam.