An Unheard Land Scam in Textile Ministry !!

A report from Comptroller and Auditor General of India is available free of cost without filing any Right to Information. Surprisingly this issue was never discussed in Media or any steps were taken against the culprits. Instead some recommendations were made, to avoid these mistakes. The whole report can be downloaded from the Official Government of India Website.

I think as a country we are so used to and perhaps immune to scams in the range of few Billions of Dollars that scam worth Rs.800-900 crs are not even worth MEDIA time and attention.

A mere glance at first two pages reveal that a Loss of Rs.493 Crs due to Absence of Minimum Assured returns. To put it simply the Textile Ministry sold the land which belonged to government at a price much below the expected or open market price.

Most interestingly defect in Tender Documents resulted in loss of Rs.185 Crs. To put it simply the government bodies have not provided sufficient information in the Tender documents, which in turn would have reduced the chances of some bidders who were not having the insider information about the land and hence the Tender was prepared in such a manner that only few parties could have won this tender in any case. On Page 147, one can read the further details that ' By Mistake' some areas which was never intended for sale was included (though not clearly stated) in the Tender. So, to put it simply those who had insider information knew that they will get a much larger chunk of land than what other bidders might assume.

All of this simply implies that somebody purchased the land at a steep discount and will use this land to convert into Mall or some Residential Complex in near future. Needless to say, during construction of such Mall or Housing society several more laws will be broken and ultimately the hard-working, tax-paying Mango Man like Me and You will spend our huge chunks of our Salary, which we earn after toiling day and night mostly in private sector and perhaps most of us will repay these loans for a significant portion of our life and a huge chunk of our life will be invested in planning to repay these loans.

And now government, some elite social activists, some intelligent foreign educated bureaucrats and politicians, reporters and international prize winning writers says that we should not take things in our hands. We should respect the Parliament, the democracy, we should not demean the Political class. On the contrary I think, unless each and every such reports, such scams are bought into limelight, discussed and the pressure is kept on them to take action and resolve the matters, under close microscopic scrutiny, THEY WONT BUDGE, SHOULD WE ?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Link to CAG Report - http://www.cag.gov.in/html/reports/commercial/2009_27PA/chap_9.pdf