Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Mar 13: The multi-crore Roshni land scam, which is first of its kind major fraud in Jammu and Kashmir, today took new turn as an application has been filed in the State High Court seeking CBI probe and close monitoring of investigation by court itself in order to punish all the erring officers.
The application No.527/2014 will be taken up for hearing along with the main Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on land grabbing, which will come up for consideration on March 18, 2014.
“The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has exposed a massive scam running into thousands of crores of rupees while implementing the J&K State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, 2001 commonly known as Roshni Scheme”, said an application filed through Advocate S S Ahmad.
While quoting a report appearing in EXCELSIOR on March 9, the applicant said, “the Principal Accountant General, S C Pandey has lambasted the senior functionaries of the State Government including those heading the Administrative Department in the Civil Secretariat for their indifferent, non-cooperative and hostile treatment to the Audit parties while conducting the test check of Roshni cases in six districts of the State”, the applicant said.
He has further said that Principal Accountant General has also raised fingers over the indifferent attitude adopted by the Chief Secretary of the State as the Audit Organization had finally approached his office for compelling the subordinate officers to provide the records sought for during Audit.
The attention of the High Court has also been drawn towards the statement of the PAG that every possible attempt was made to cover up the biggest ever land scam by denying vital information for the Audit. He (PAG) has also hinted that Rs 225 crore loss to the exchequer, which came to the fore in the test checked cases, was just tip of an ice berg, the applicant has further said.
In the application, it has also been mentioned that CAG has detected glaring violations in the implementation of the Roshni Scheme, which include undue benefit of higher rebates, irregular transfer of lands to Trusts, irregular mutation of lands, deficient system to check ceilings on permitted land transfers, transfer of lands without reference to authentic revenue records, irregular transfer of lands adjoining roads and highways, transfer of lands to persons not in its actual physical possession, non-eviction of unauthorized occupants, non-reconciliation of departmental receipt with Treasury Accounts and transfer of agriculture land free of cost against the provisions of the Act.
After the expose made by CAG, State Vigilance Commission has directed the State Vigilance Organization to register multiple FIRs and reportedly three SITs have been constituted to investigate the scam. However, till date not even a single FIR has been registered by the SVO and it appears that the SVO intends to first go for verification/preliminary enquiries, the application said.
Stating that State Vigilance Organization is a State controlled organization, which is answerable to the State Government in General Administration Department and there is no possibility of free, fair and unbiased investigation, the applicant said, “looking into the magnitude of the scam and in view of the involvement of senior IAS/KAS officers, then posted as Deputy Commissioners in various districts of the State and the then Divisional Commissioners of Jammu/Kashmir Divisions, who abused their official position while implementing the Roshni Scheme, there is every possibility that investigation will be derailed and not taken to its logical conclusion”.
“In order to instill people’s confidence in rule of law and the fairness of investigation the instant scam is required to be entrusted to the premier investigating agency of the country—CBI so that whosoever is involved is dealt under law”, the applicant said, adding “not only this, the investigation of this multi-crore scam is required to be monitored by the court till filing of the charge sheet in the competent court of law as the erring officers are highly influential and occupy responsible positions in the State bureaucracy”.
“Moreover, the beneficiaries of the scam are highly influential bureaucrats, politicians and land mafia”, the application said, adding “even the CAG in its report has mentioned that gross irregularities were committed while considering the cases of the beneficiaries including the headquarters of National Conference and Congress at Srinagar”.
The application has been filed by Ankur Sharma, a resident of Kathua, who is pursuing LLB (Professional) from Faculty of Law, Delhi University and is also an RTI activist.
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