Manesar land scam: Tehsildar suspended

Meetu Dhankar, Tehsildar of Manesar Sub-Division, and her two juniors have been suspended for their alleged involvement in selling government plots to private individuals through nearly two dozen different registries, an official said on Wednesday.

Sanjiv Singhla, Gurugram sub-divisional magistrate (north), said Dhankar and registry clerk Ashok Kumar have been suspended while services of computer operator Shishu Pal has been terminated.

Naib Tehsildar Ishwar Singh, revenue officials Satbir Singh and Gulab Singh along with one other official at Manesar have been facing departmental inquiry, said District Revenue officer Hariom Atri.

The land deals were struck from March 14 this year onwards, two days after the Supreme Court reversed the Haryana government's decision to scrap the acquisition and ruled that ownership of the land now rested with the state industry body HSIIDC and urban development authority Huda.

According to an inquiry by Singla, while some of the deals included change of land ownership within a family, others involved third party transactions.

Officials in the know said even though they were still assessing the extent of land sold off, they were sure that so far, at least 25 registrations (at least four acres of land) have been made by different landowners in the two-and-a-half month period.

Singhla said many such deals happened before the March 12 verdict, even as the land was sub-judice. However, the inquiry is restricted to land transactions after the verdict.

During 2004-2007, land with market value above Rs 4 crore per acre, totalling about Rs 1,600 crore, was allegedly purchased by private builders from the land owners in only about Rs 100 crore.

The land parcels fall within three villages, Manesar, Nakhdaula and Naurangpur. When farmers from these villages approached the Supreme Court, it ordered status quo in the favour of farmers on April 24, 2015.

An FIR was then registered against unknown political leaders, builders and their agents under various sections of Indian Penal Code on August 12.

The CBI registered a case on September 15 against Haryana's former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and 32 others and started investigation.

--IANS

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