Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday announced a stay on all transactions related to an alleged land scam in Navi Mumbai, a day after he ordered a judicial probe into the matter, PTI reported.
“No transaction related to the sale, transfer or lease will take place until the probe report is submitted,” Fadnavis said in the Legislative Council on Friday, the Hindustan Times reported. The Raigad district collector and revenue officials have been directed to stop all processes related to the sale of land, he added.
Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam said the 24-acre land in Kharghar, worth Rs 1,767 crore, was meant for people affected by the Koyna dam project. A private builder, however, bought it for just Rs 3.6 crore, PTI quoted him as saying. He alleged that the builder is an associate of Bharatiya Janata Party MLC Prasad Lad.
On Thursday, Fadnavis told the Assembly that a judicial probe would be conducted into the land deal. The chief minister said 200 other cases of land allotment by the previous Congress-led governments would also be investigated along with the current allegations.
Fadnavis accused the previous Congress-Nationalist Congress Party of granting power to the additional collector to allot land to project-affected persons that can be sold to anybody. “The land does not belong to CIDCO [City and Industrial Development Corporation],” the chief minister said in the Assembly. “It is the agricultural land belonging to the state government which is given to project-affected persons for agricultural purpose only. The builder purchased it from eight farmers as agricultural land. During 15 years of the Congress-NCP rule, 200 farmers sold the land allocated to them.”
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