COVER STORY

The real estate pie

Attempts by the Bharatiya Janata Party to salvage its image following the petrol pump allotment controversy fail as yet another round of irregularities, involving the allotment of government land to its saffron associates in New Delhi, surfaces.

PURNIMA S. TRIPATHI
in New Delhi

EVEN before the Bharatiya Janata Party could deal effectively with the petrol pump allotment scandal, it was facing the music with regard to the allotment of certain plots of land in the national capital. To its discomfiture, the land records available with the Urban Development Ministry proved that in the last two years, Sangh Parivar affiliates were provided prime real estate at throwaway prices in central locations. Except to allege that other parties while in power had done much the same thing, the party failed to provide a credible reply to the media expose on the matter.

Soon after the land scam broke out, National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government issued instructions to retrieve the records of all land allotments made in the last 50 years in order to prove that it was not the first time that political considerations had played a role in such allotments. According to details available so far, the highest number of allotments made by the Urban Development Ministry in the last two years have gone to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in the heart of New Delhi at one-tenth the going market rate. Records of the Land and Development Office (LDO) under the Ministry for the years 1996-2002 show that of the 209 allotments, 115 have gone to government departments. Of the 94 remaining ones, a huge chunk has gone to Sangh Parivar affiliates, most of the allotments being made after 1999.

S. SUBRAMANIUM
Urban Development Minister Ananth Kumar.

A look at the list of allottees and their affiliations provides ample evidence of the Sangh Parivar's advantage in the matter of allotments. Some of the BJP-RSS affiliates allotted land at Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg include the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of BJP; the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the BJP's labour wing; Sanskriti Bharati, the cultural wing of the RSS; the Samarth Shiksha Samiti and the Vidya Bharati, RSS organisations that are active in the educational sector; and the Vaish Agrawal Education Society, headed by Vijay Goel, a Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). All these allotments were made for the stated objective of running educational/cultural organisations.

For example, Sanskriti Bharati, which is headed by RSS worker K. Suryanarayana and claims to be working for the promotion of Sanskrit, was allotted 1,713.6 square yards on Rouse Avenue in November 2001 at the rate of Rs.1,818 a square yard as against the going rate of Rs.96,000 a square yard. The BMS was allotted 856.8 square yards on Rouse Avenue in June, 2001 at Rs.1,818 a square yard. Similarly, the Samarth Shiksha Samiti was allotted 5,290.1 square yards in Shivalik Colony in January 2002 at Rs.1,818 a square yard against the market rate of Rs.80,000 a square yard. This organisation has RSS member Jai Prakash Gupta as its patron. Ashok Pal is the president and K.C. Bathla the general secretary. It also managed to procure 1.554 acres (0.63 hectares) in Aram Bagh near Jhandewalan, apparently to run a school, at Rs.1,818 a square yard against the market rate of Rs.55,000 a square yard. (In order to accommodate the Samiti, a slum colony in this area is to be demolished.) This organisation also got allotments in Nehru Nagar, Lajpat Nagar, Mehrauli-Badarpur Road and Vasant Vihar, all for educational purposes. Sewa Bharati, an RSS affiliate working in slum areas, was allotted 399 square metres at Bhai Veer Singh Marg in April 2001 at Rs.1,818 a square yard.

Similarly, the Delhi Bharat Vikas Foundation, headed by BJP MP L.M. Singhvi and which has Culture and Tourism Minister Jagmohan as its patron, was allotted 1,258 square yards of Delhi Development Authority (DDA) land in Yojna Vihar in 2001 at Rs.682.03 per square yard against the market rate of Rs.30,000 a square yard, apparently to open a hospital for disabled people. Another RSS affiliate, Vishwa Jagriti Mission, was allotted 672 square yards of DDA land in Rohini in 2000-01 at Rs.3,482 a square yard against the market rate of Rs.24,000 a square yard. The BJP secured a plot of 0.233 acre on Rouse Avenue in April 2001 at Rs.1,818 a square yard, apparently to construct an office for its Delhi unit. The Vishwa Samvad Kendra, the publicity wing of the VHP, was allotted 1,044 square metres on Rouse Avenue in March 2001 at Rs.88 lakh an acre. The Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, an RSS-affiliated organisation active in tribal areas, was allotted 506 square metres on Mehrauli-Badarpur Road on July 19 at Rs.88 lakh an acre, apparently to construct a complex for the 'amelioration and upliftment' of tribal people, a hostel and a free dispensary. The ABVP was allotted land on Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg to run its organisation called the Students' Experience in Inter-State Living.

Union Urban Development Minister Ananth Kumar does not see anything amiss in these allotments. In a statement, he said that there was no discrimination in allotments and, in order to prove this, the Ministry would soon put up on its website all such allotments made in the last 50 years. He said that even the Congress(I), the Left parties, various trade unions, the Delhi government, the Bar Association of India and the Press Club were allotted land in the past at concessional rates. "These institutional allotments are done purely based on merit," Ananth Kumar said. However, he added: "In any case, there is no express or implied bar on allotment of land to any organisation, merely on the grounds that one or more persons connected with the organisation are also associated with any political party, if it fulfils all the laid-down criteria." Citing examples, he said that the All India Congress Committee (now Jawahar Bhawan Trust/Rajiv Gandhi Foundation), the A.K. Gopalan Trust (Communist Party of India-Marxist), Ajoy Bhawan (Commu-nist Party of India), the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) and the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee, among others, have been allotted land on concessional rates. In the same category, he cited the example of "institutional land" allotted to various newspapers at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg "with a specification that the land should be utilised only for the purpose of publishing a newspaper".

According to Ananth Kumar's statement, "the process of allotment of land to institutions commenced with the allotment of land to various newspaper concerns here in the early 1950s". About the low rates at which land was allotted, he said that the "pre-determined" rates were "revised periodically in consultation with the Ministry of Finance. The last time the rate was revised was in April 1998 when it was raised from Rs.80 lakhs per acre for central and south Delhi to Rs.88 lakhs per acre". Ananth Kumar said that other organisations that received allotments included the Jawaharlal Nehru National Youth Centre, the Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Trust, the Yuva Bharati Trust, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (B.T. Ranadive Memorial Trust) and the Bharat Sewak Samaj. Legal organisations that received land included the Delhi Tax Bar Association, the Society of Indian Law Firms (with Lalit Bhasin as president) and the Bar Association of India (with F.S. Nariman as president). He said that three plots were allotted to the Delhi government to establish family courts. Allotments made to "socio-cultural institutions of eminence" included Child Relief and You (CRY), the National Federation of the Blind, the Rashtriya Sewa Samiti, the Santhagiri Ashram, the Rotary Habitat Centre, the Delhi Malayali Association, the Natya Tarangini, the Jain Sabha, the Krishnamoorthi Foundation, the Press Club of India, the Civil Services Officers Institute, the Veda Vigyan Mahavidyapeeth, Sri Aurobindo Society, the Servants of the People Society and the Sadhu Vaswani Mission. Some of the 600 schools that had been allotted land in Delhi, Ananth Kumar said, included the Delhi Public School Society, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, the Indraprastha College for Women, the Mata Amrithanandamayi School, the Andhra Educational Society, the Delhi Tamil Educational Association, the G.R. Goenka Educational Institution, the Madarsa Kaushiful-Uloom, the Don Bosco School and the Police Foundation Public School.

S. SUBRAMANIUM

S. SUBRAMANIUM

Two of the plots over the allotments of which questions have been raised, on Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg, New Delhi.

Meanwhile, Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Vijai Kapoor said that the DDA, which he headed, did not look at the political/ideological affiliations of any organisation before allotting land. Former Urban Development Minister Jagmohan, during whose tenure (June 1999 to August 2001) the highest number of allotments were made, has also tried to wash his hands of the controversy. He said that only four RSS-affiliated organisations were allotted land during his tenure - the Samarth Shiksha Samiti, the Sewa Bharati, the Vishwa Samvad Kendra and the Sanskriti Bharati. He said he was not aware of the other allotments which were made after he moved out of the Ministry.

MEANWHILE, the government decided to probe all allotments of petroleum product, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) dealerships made since 1983. Petroleum Minister Ram Naik confirmed that, as demanded by over 100 BJP MPs, his Ministry would investigate all allotments made since 1983, so that a complete list could be prepared to ascertain which political parties had benefited. Naik said: "I have ordered the Petroleum Ministry to find out which States were allotted petrol pumps and gas agencies between 1983 and 2000. When all this information is collected and analysed, we will decide what to do." He said that the BJP MPs had complained to him that the government's decision to cancel all allotments made since 2000 had singled out those involving BJP leaders and their families.

The Petroleum Ministry has asked the public sector oil companies Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum and IBP to furnish period-wise details of allotments. The four companies have been asked to compile data on allotments made during the tenure of a particular government. They have also been asked to compile a list of allottees, their affiliations, and the process by which they were selected, whether it was from the Minister's discretionary quota or on the basis of interviews. Data are also being collected on the other applicants and how they fared in the interviews.

The Petroleum and Law Ministries are giving final touches to an ordinance that will justify the government's decision to cancel allotments made since 2000 and sidestep any judicial intervention. BJP spokesperson Arun Jaitley said that the legislative option would strengthen the government's case. The ordinance is understood to have the Prime Minister's approval. The rough draft was discussed at the Prime Minister's residence at a meeting which was also attended by Solicitor-General Harish Salve.