Chandigarh, October 8
The Punjab Government has ordered an inquiry into the alleged evasion of stamp duty by undervaluing land being sold or bought by certain politicians in Mohali district.

Instances of commercial land being registered as agricultural land, so as to pay bare minimum stamp duty on registration of its sale deed, will also be covered under the probe.

Deputy Commissioner of Mohali TPS Sidhu has been asked to look into cases of under-valuation of land while getting sale deeds registered and any other instances where sale of residential or commercial land has been registered by falsely showing it as agricultural or barren land. The inquiry has been marked to the officer by Financial Commissioner (Revenue) NS Kang.

The inquiry follows an allegation by Punjab Congress spokesperson Sukhpal Khaira that Chief Parliamentary Secretary (Industries) NK Sharma got residential land in Zirakpur registered as agricultural land.

Sharma has levelled counter-allegations that Khaira and state Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa and his brother Fateh Jung Bajwa undervalued land (located in Karoran and Bhanojian villages of Mohali) while getting sale deeds registered.

Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia told The Tribune that he had initiated a probe into questionable land deals in Mohali that were exposed in the media today.

“Anybody- be it an Akali or a Congress leader-found guilty of misrepresenting facts while getting sale deeds of land registered, and thus causing loss to the state exchequer, will be brought to book,” he said.

Contending that several instances of land being undervalued while getting sale deeds registered had come to his notice, the minister said he was already getting a special audit of all sale deed registries being done from Price WaterHouse Coopers and KPMG.

“The audit of over one lakh registries is being done by these auditors. We are expecting their audit report to be finalised by the end of November or beginning of December. The audit is being done in the cities of Mohali, Amritsar, Hoshiarpur, Ludhiana, Patiala and Bathinda-which yield 70 per cent of the total revenue through registries,” he added.