M A I N   N E W S

ADARSH SOCIETY SCAM
Chief promoter under lens for land grab
A section of the project area was reserved for mini forest
Shiv Kumar
Tribune News Service

The police arrests Shiv Sena activists protesting against Adarsh housing society scam in Mumbai on Monday. — PTI

Mumbai, November 15
A junior official from the Ministry of Defence who is shown in the records as the chief promoter of the Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society has gone underground after several government agencies began to probe the controversial building where prominent politicians, bureaucrats and military officials were given flats at throwaway prices.

RC Thakur, the chief promoter, was a military sub-divisional estate officer in South Mumbai’s Colaba in the year 1999-2000 when the project was first mooted. Thakur liaised with top military officials, politicians and bureaucrats and pushed the project, which grew from a six-storeyed building to a 31-storeyed project having 104 flats. Thakur himself owns the entire 25th floor of the society, which has been amalgamated into a single flat.

According to security personnel at the building, Thakur and his relatives had visited the flat through October and even earlier this month to furnish the premises and hold ‘pujas’ even as the Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh warned of demolishing the entire building.

However, Thakur and his relatives are staying away from the premises of late. He has shifted to Nagpur where he owns a flat, as per sources.

According to reports, Thakur has since retired from the Indian Army as Assistant Defence Estate Officer. Though the project was covered extensively by local newspapers, which even interviewed Thakur, he continued to push the project with the authorities concerned, Maharashtra government sources say. He was brazen enough to hit out at critics in the military establishment as late as last month.

Thakur even alleged that Chief of the Western Naval Command Vice Admiral Sanjiv Bhasin was frustrated because he did not get a flat in the society himself. The scandal came to light after Bhasin wrote to his superiors about the residential building in the defence area that had civilians as office-bearers.

Before 1999, a section of the plot on which Adarsh Society stands was part of the Khukri Eco Park, which was developed and maintained by the armed forces. More than 150 trees had been planted on the plot and it had been reserved for a mini-forest, according to sources.