PANAJI
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said on Tuesday that the government and the Opposition had come together to defraud people by striking a settlement with the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) promoters to pay them Rs 256 crore of tax payers’ money to take back the land allotted to them.
Addressing the media, AAP leader on environment Sidharth Karapurkar gave details of how around 40 lakh square meters of precious land was acquired from the Comunidades and given for a song to SEZ promoters as held by the High Court.
He said that the allocation of the land among seven companies was done during the tenure of then Chief Minister Pratapsingh Rane on the recommendation of the then Industries Minister Luizinho Faleiro, without following any procedure. This compelled the High Court to pass strictures on the officials of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and the government.
Karapurkar said that all the four applications made were hand written with the same handwriting, indicating that the process was flawed to help the SEZ promoters. He further added that at the time of the application, two of the companies were not even registered as entities. Based on public outcry in 2007, the police merely registered complaints but without proceeding to investigate the matter and failed to register an appropriate FIR.
“There was some hope in 2012 that the BJP government would take action, but the Manohar Parrikar-led dispensation chose only to file complaints against ‘unknown persons’ when the names of accused were known. These included the name of the then chairman of IDC and the present opposition leader Babu Kavlekar,” said Karapurkar.
