With IAS officers as witnesses, trial against Hooda to start on May 7

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 16

With present and past IAS officers as witnesses, the trial against former Chief Minister and Leader of the Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda will start on May 7 for criminal conspiracy, cheating and under the Prevention of Corruption Act in the Associated Journals Limited (AJL) plot re-allotment case.

Some of these officers had closely worked with him during his tenure as Chief Minister.

Hooda still has time to file an appeal before the Punjab and Haryana High Court against the dismissal of his discharge application.

The institutional plot of M/s AJL was resumed in 1992 as the company did not carry out construction as required under the rules. Ramshekhar (IAS officer) as Administrator (Panchkula), Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), rejected the appeal of the company in 1995.

Former IAS officer ML Tayal, then Secretary, Town and Country Planning Department, had dismissed the revision petition of the company in 1996, and the matter achieved finality.

However, Hooda re-allotted the plot on August 28, 2005, after coming to power in an alleged conspiracy with then chairman of AJL Motilal Vora. He bypassed the opinion given by then Chief Administrator, HUDA, SS Dhillon, then Financial Commissioner, Town and Country Planning Department, Shakuntla Jakhu and even Joint Legal Remembrancer Jagdeep Jain.

Dhillon, Jakhu and Jain are CBI's witnesses in the case. Jain had given his opinion that the plot could not be allotted once the revision petition had been dismissed by Tayal and if allotment was to be made, it had to be at the current prices as per the procedure.

The 97th meeting of HUDA was held on May 16, 2006, whose chairman was Hooda himself and the ex-post facto approval of the re-allotment had been accorded. Former IAS officer Prem Prashant, who was Chief Secretary in 2006 and had participated in the 97th meeting as vice-chairman, told the CBI that the matter for ex-post facto approval of the Chief Minister's order, dated August 28, 2005, was not required to be put before HUDA, but instead if any ratification was required, it was to be placed before the Cabinet.

He added that had he been informed about the noting on the files, he would have dissented as its approval by then Chief Minister did not make any sense. Former IAS officer RN Prashar, then Principal Secretary, Power Department, and member of HUDA, and former IAS officer N Bala Bhaskar, then PS to the Urban Development Department and also member of the authority, recorded that ex-post facto approval was a mere formality because re-allotment had already been made. Former IAS officer ML Tayal, then PS to the Chief Minister and member

continued on page 3

from The Tribune https://ift.tt/3mYKCE7