RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, April 17: The Jharkhand High Court today directed the state government and the central government to file an affidavit in a PIL demanding probe into land compensation scam at Keredari in Hazaribagh district. Those allegedly involved in the scam are officials of National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and the Jharkhand revenue department.
Petitioner Mantu Soni informed about the development saying the direction came from the division bench headed by Chief Justice Sanjaya Kumar Mishra after the ED appearing in the court accepted the genuineness of the allegation and said an FIR in this connection has been registered at Keredari police station.
“The high court has given four-week time to the central government and the state government to file an affidavit and deferred the hearing in the matter till June 19. Now the case will be taken up after summer vacation,” Soni said, adding that advocates Abhishek Krishna Gupta and Madan Kumar appeared on his behalf in the court.
If words of Soni are anything to go by, using fake documents several high profile people claimed land compensation from NTPC and the public sector company distributed the amount without spot verification and when asked about the same he passed the buck on the state revenue department saying the compensation was paid only after the revenue department identified the genuineness of claimant.
According to Soni, the scam amount is over Rs 3000 crore and out of the said amount Rs 300 crore have already been distributed. He said in 2016, on the recommendation of the then Deputy Commissioner Mukesh Kumar, the state government constituted a three-member SIT team headed by retired IAS officer Devashish Gupta to probe the matter and the probe was also done but its report so far has not come in public domain.
In the name of action after the SIT probe only correspondence has been done with the Managing Director of NTPC and the Hazaribagh deputy commissioner, Soni said.
