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Court orders FIR against Raje

Special Correspondent

Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje

JAIPUR: A court here has directed the police to register a case against former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and five others in connection with the controversial Deendayal Upadhyay Trust case in which 7,693 square metres of land at a prime location was allotted at throwaway prices to the trust headed by Ms. Raje.

Passing the orders, Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate H. S. Sisodia directed the Jaipur police to register an FIR against Ms. Raje, former Mayor and MLA Ashok Parnami, former Rajasthan BJP president Lalit Kishore Chaturvedi, former Minister Pratap Singh Singhvi, former Housing Board Chairman Ajay Pal Singh and the then Jaipur Development Authority Commissioner D. B. Gupta. The land near Civil Lines valued at over Rs.50 crore was allotted to the trust at a mere Rs.65 lakh during the previous BJP regime headed by Ms. Raje in July 2006. A Sriganganagar-based lawyer, Srikrishna Kukkar, moved the court seeking action against the accused while alleging an open violation of rules by them. He also sought seizure of the trust’s bank accounts.

The Special Public Prosecutor appointed by the BJP-led Government had in his written reply told the court that no case was made out against Ms. Raje and others as the land allotment had been cancelled. The newly-installed Congress Government replaced the Public Prosecutor after the alleged land scam was highlighted by local newspapers.

The new Public Prosecutor affirmed in the court on Friday that the directions passed in the case would be carried out in toto.

The Magistrate noted that the orders for registering an FIR and launching investigation in the case were earlier passed in November 2006 but the city police did not comply with them. The then Station House Officer of the Gandhi Nagar police station, Jehangir Khan, merely made an entry in the diary with the observation that no criminal case was made out.

The court directed the Inspector-General of Police, Jaipur Range, to take disciplinary action against Mr. Khan – since promoted as Deputy Superintendent of Police – for not taking appropriate action in compliance with the court’s order of November 10, 2006.

According to Mr. Kukkar’s application, the land was allotted to the Deendayal Upadhyay Trust on July 4, 2006, much before it was registered on August 20, 2006. Besides, the trust did not qualify to get the land under the Jaipur Development Authority rules as it had not come into existence at least three years before the allotment.

The Congress had raised the issue and launched a public agitation on it as an opposition party in 2006. The then BJP-led Government apparently cancelled the allotment after the alleged scam came to light under public pressure.

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