Land allotment: How Naveen Patnaik's govt threw norms to wind

By Sandeep Sahu For 13 years, Naveen Patnaik has assiduously built a public image of honesty, probity and transparency about his government. But like a high rise built with substandard construction material, the carefully constructed edifice is coming crashing down in a heap. Even as it is grappling with the possibility of an indictment by the Justice MB Shah Commission probing the massive mining scam in the state, estimated to be the biggest in the country, comes the scathing indictment of the government by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in the matter of land allocation in the burgeoning capital city of Bhubaneswar. The recently released CAG report on general and social sector lays bare the cynical flouting of all norms of fair play, ad-hocism, favouritism and gross abuse of discretionary powers in allotment of government land in Bhubaneswar. The refusal to revise premiums to be paid for nine long years from 2000 (when Naveen came to power) till 2009, despite existing rules requiring such revision every three years, alone has resulted in a loss of Rs 251.92 crore, the report by the Central auditor points out. The review of all government land allocation in Bhubaneswar in the period from 2000 to 2012 by the CAG reveals the near total absence of any rules, procedures or norms in land allocation, arbitrariness and worse. Land has been allotted by multiple agencies in gross violation of land use plan, additional land has been allotted and premiums fixed at will and improper concessions granted to a favoured few. There has been no time frame for acceptance or rejection of applications either. In one case (Root Corporation Limited), land was allocated within just 47 days of the application being made while in another (in the case of Lt Col PC Jena), it took the government an unbelievable 24 years to do the same! [caption id=“attachment_731297” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Under fire? PTI[/caption] For reasons that are all too obvious, the two cases that have generated the maximum heat are the allotment of prime government land in Bhubaneswar to Biplab Patro, son of Revenue minister Surya Narayan Patro and former Union minister Dilip Ray, owner of Mayfair Hotels, who fell out with Naveen later (though their names have not been mentioned in the report). Hotel Ambassador International, headed by the junior Patro, was allotted 1.01 acres of land in the Nayapalli area nearly 10 year ago after changing the land use pattern from ‘residential’ to ‘commercial’ in 56 days flat. Curiously, even as the land use pattern was changed to ‘commercial’, the government, for reasons best known to it, chose to charge premium at the ‘institutional’ rate of Rs 50 lakh per acre – and that too in eight installments - rather than the ‘commercial’ rate of Rs 75 lakh per acre. After paying just one installment, the lessee wanted the lease to be transferred in the name of Hotel South Pac Private Limited, which was granted with unusual alacrity by a generous government. That is not all. Despite the fact that the lessee was required to complete the construction by July 2003 as per the terms of the agreement, the government kept granting extensions to Patro till as late as September 2012. Faced with embarrassment over the highly irregular allocation, a worried government finally cancelled the lease in November 2012. Patro is now preparing to challenge in the Odisha High Court the order of the government in which his father is a senior minister. Mayfair Hotels was granted 10.237 acres of ‘forest’ land in five phases in commercially important Jaydev Vihar area over a two-year period from March 1998 to February 2000 – a time when its proprietor Dilip Ray was a key political associate of Naveen Patnaik and a minister in the Union government – without obtaining the concurrence of the Government of India as required under the Forest Conservation Act 1980. Another case ferreted out by the CAG that has raised many eyebrows is the allotment of 5.124 acres of land to ITC Sonar Bangla Sheraton Hotels and Towers in despite the objections raised by Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA). In allocating the land to the Kolkata based company, the state government not only violated the provisions of the land use zone, but also fixed the premium at a paltry Rs 35 lakh per acre against the market value of Rs 1.5 crore, causing a loss of Rs 5.90 crore to the state exchequer, the report points out. The CAG report also reported instances of highly arbitrary concessions granted by the government to some of the beneficiaries. For example, the DAV School in Kalinganagar was granted 50% concession in premium, despite the objection of the Finance department on the ground that the school operated on a commercial basis. Interestingly, the same favour was denied to School of Integral Education at Bhimpur without assigning any reason whatsoever. In the case of the music Gurukul in Ghatikia and the Bhubaneswar Eye Research Institute, the concession was to the extent of a whopping 80%. The CAG report noted with concern that though the General Administration (GA) department, which has always been held by the Chief Minister, was entrusted with the task of allotting land in the Odisha capital way back in 1952, no rules, regulations or norms have been fixed for such allocations in the sixty years since then. While the Naveen Patnaik government is not the only one which has found it convenient not to have norms in place for allocation of government land, it is more answerable and culpable than its predecessors since its advent at the turn of the millennium roughly coincided with the beginning of the shooting up land prices in Bhubaneswar.