MHA report raps Chandigarh officials

Chandigarh Finance Secretary Sanjay Kumar has expressed his displeasure over the way media has highlighted the draft report submitted by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) regarding upcoming projects in Chandigarh.

Addressing a press conference here today Kumar said that the report prepared by the MHA was just a regular audit. He added that the administration would be filing its replies accordingly regarding objection raised in the report. The “Report on Special Audit of Chandigarh” prepared by MHA that conducted an audit of projects for which land was acquired by the Union Territory(UT) administration has pointed out discrepancies practised by the officials.

The MHA-prepared audit report has alleged that inadequate compensation was paid to farmers while acquiring land for the Phase-2 and Phase 3 of the IT Park project.

Similarly discrepancies have been pointed out while allotting lands to companies in the IT project. The report indicated that UT officials have showed undue favour extended to certain IT companies by lowering price of land allotted to them.

The dream of UT administration to transform the city had gone sour as the planned projects went under the Central Vigilance Commission(CVC) scanner.

The CVC last year had summoned files pertaining to the multimedia-cum -film city project, theme-cum-amusement park and medicity project after voices regarding transparency in allotting the projects were raised. The CVC is still investigating the projects. According to reports in certain sections of media CVC has marked CBI probe in all the three projects.