Maharashtra land allotment policy's base rate impractical: CM

Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said here today that the base rate of the state land allotment policy of 1976 would be changed soon as it was not practical and often mired in controversy.
Reacting to alleged irregularities in allotting land to Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajeev Shukla at Andheri in Mumbai, he said that in view of the present ready reckoner on land rates in Mumbai, the base rate of the state land allotment policy of 1976 is very impractical and needs to be changed.
"It is good that Shukla returned the allotted plots to the government, since it was impossible to acquire land that was reserved for a municipal school," Chavan said during a brief interaction with reporters on the sidelines of an event.

Irregularities in allotting the prime land worth several crores of rupees to Shukla at a throwaway price surfaced, even as the Congress in the state is bracing for a political storm over the Adarsh Commission report which the opposition wants to be tabled in the legislature.
Shukla had written a letter to then Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh in 2007, seeking land in Andheri to build a school and a playground.
On Deshmukh's special recommendation, a plot measuring 2,821 square metres reserved for a municipal school by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation was allotted to BAGS Education Society run by Shukla for merely Rs 98,735, when the plot's market rate is more than Rs 100 crore.

Another plot, measuring 3,534 square metres, reserved for a playground was leased for 15 years to Shukla.