Chandigarh, October 12
The audit report on Chandigarh Administration, prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has underlined glaring inconsistencies and quoted instances of undue favours to certain IT companies in allotment of land at Rajiv Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park here.
The ‘Report on Special Audit of Chandigarh Administration’ was submitted at a meeting held in the national capital last week. The report has held the UT Administration guilty of giving poor compensation to the farmers for the land acquired from them. “It was found that there were discrepancies in allotment of land to various companies. No uniform system was followed during the entire process,” said the report.
Picking holes in the relief paid to the farmers, the report said, “There have been attempts to bypass the budgetary process of the Union government and the receipts have been kept out of the government accounts. The Chandigarh Housing Board has been used as an instrument in bypassing the budgetary process. Also, several cases of direct allotment at very low prices, violation of tender clauses and irregular appointment of consultants to supervise the bidding process were noticed during the process of audit.”
It has been pointed out that the compensation given to the citizens whose land has been acquired by the UT Administration could be re-examined in the light of NRRP policy and various court judgements available in this regard.
Specifying certain cases, the report revealed that the request for allotting land to Tech Mahindra was received on January 15, 2006, while the process of allotting land to the firm began on January 6. The administration is said to have given land to FCS Software Solutions without a formal application. The Mobera System is said to have not
deposited the processing fee of Rs 10,000.
The report also says that the market rates in Panchkula and Mohali were not considered, while deciding on the compensation amount for the farmers. The UT has suffered huge financial losses on account of not fixing the correct land rates for the IT firms.
The report also states that the UT Administration could give no justification as to why rates for the main campus sites at the IT park were reduced from Rs 42.06 lakh to Rs 31.53 lakh per acre and for specific campus sites from Rs 1.0 crore to Rs 76.50 lakh.
