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HPCA row
VB chargesheets Dhumal & son
Lalit Mohan
Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, April 25
A chargesheet was filed in a court here on Friday against Himachal ex-chief minister PK Dhumal, his MP-son Anurag Thakur and 16 others for wrongfully converting HPCA, registered as a society, into a company of the same name without the state government’s permission.

While Dhumal, currently Leader of Opposition, is patron-in-chief of the HPCA, his son and BJP Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur is the cricketing body president and is re-contesting the parliamentary election. The bureau had sent Dhumal a questionnaire regarding his role in grant of land to the HPCA, but found his reply unsatisfactory. It then took sanction to prosecute him from Himachal Governor Urmila Singh.

The chargesheet was filed under several sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act in the special court of the Dharamsala Additional District and Sessions Judge at Nurpur that is designated to hear graft cases.

Those named included two IAS officers -- Additional Chief Secretary Deepak Sanan and Bilaspur Deputy Commissioner Ajay Sharma - HPCA honorary secretary Vishal Marwah and vice-president Sanjay Sharma.

While Sanan was Principal Secretary (Revenue) when change of land use was allowed, Ajay Sharma was Director, Youth Services and Sports, when the land in question was given on lease to HPCA to build a stadium.

Then Dharamsala Municipal Committee chief executive officer RS Verma has also been linked to the case and is named in the chargesheet. Some revenue officials and panchayat members are also mentioned.

The HPCA is under investigation for wrongfully converting a registered society into a company. The Himalayan Players Cricket Association was first registered as a company in Kanpur in 2005. Its name was later changed to Himachal Players Cricket Association and the company acronym remained identical.

The Vigilance inquiry focused on whether the company was formed specifically to take over the HPCA, which is a society. The state government had given land on lease to the HPCA as a society.

However, the HPCA society allegedly subleased it to HPCA company under provisions of Section 9 of new lease rules adopted by the state government in 2011.

The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau had registered a cheating and misappropriation case against the state cricket body on August 1, 2013, over alleged wrongdoings in land allotment and for constructing a residential complex for players near its stadium in Dharamsala.

The investigation was started by the state Vigilance and Anti- Corruption Bureau after the present Congress government took over on the basis of a chargesheet filed by the party against the previous BJP government and a complaint filed by Dharamsala advocate Vinay Sharma.