Balco heads for a land hurdle in Chhattisgarh

Vedanta-controlled Bharat Aluminium Company Limited (Balco) is heading for a fresh trouble as a complain petition has been filed in the court seeking investigation into the land given to it by the Chhattisgarh government allegedly at a throw away price.

The complain petition under section 156(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) read with section 200 has been filed in the court of First Class Magistrate B P Varma here in Raipur district court. The petition has been filed by former minister and senior Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel.

“In the complain, we have sought to register an offence against chief minister Raman Singh, the then chief secretary P Joy Oommen and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Balco Gunjan Gupta besides probing the land deal that has caused huge loss to the state exchequer,”Baghel’s lawyer G M Ahluwalia told Business Standard.

The matter is related to regularizing the land that Balco had allegedly encroached for its aluminium facility located in Korba district, Ahluwalia said, adding that the state government had given away the land to the company at premium of just Rs 200 and lease rate of Rs 20 per acre. The land price remained the same when Balco was given land for the plant way back in 1968, he added.

Baghel said that they had earlier submitted a memorandum to the Governor, Shekhar Dutt requesting to sanction prosecution of Chief Minister Raman Singh, then chief secretary P Joy Oommen and officials concerned of revenue department.

According to the petitioner, on the initiative of Balco for an out-of-court settlement of the case pertaining to encroaching about 1200 acres of government land, the chief minister and the then chief secretary took the initiative to present the case before the state cabinet.”In one single day on April 27, 2010, the related files were cleared from eight departments,” Ahluwalia said.

In the complaint, Baghel underlined that the land (about 1200 acres) was regularized and allotted to Balco for Rs 200 per acre the rate that existed in 1968. “In the deal, the state had to bear a huge revenue loss of more than Rs 200 crore,” his lawyer said.

The court had posted the next hearing for August 4.

The Balco spokesperson refused to comment on the matter when contacted.