More skeletons keep falling out of the closet of the maze of deceit of the capital countries. New investigations by the Criminal Investigation Department have reportedly revealed a deeply ingrained link between politicians and certain bureaucrats in the introduction of GO Ms 41 (Land Bundling Program for the capital, Andhra Pradesh), which changed the rules to assign developed land to those that had assigned land feature.
In an affidavit presented to the Andhra Pradesh Supreme Court suspending all proceedings in the proceedings filed by Mangalagiri MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy against former Prime Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and former Minister of City Administration P. Narayana, the CID filed a decisive one Evidence and asked the court to revoke their stay and help with further investigations.
“The whole fraud revolved around a web of lies and deceit. A campaign was carried out over allegations by some political sections and government agencies that the assigned lands were being taken over by the government, causing a sense of fear and panic among officials, most of whom were Dalit communities. The assigned land was then purchased at throwaway prices and later underwent a land pooling program. In return, they received developed land after they had submitted GO Ms No. 41 in February 2016 in violation of all existing regulations. Giving the GO caused massive losses to the Treasury and was against business rules, ”said the CID DSP Lakshminarayana in an affidavit filed with the High Court.
The CID said the GO had not been previously approved by the Cabinet or passed by the Legislative Assembly, which is mandatory under the APCRDA law.
The CID stated that the agency had discovered the criminal conspiracy of the then Prime Minister and then Minister of the City Administration in issuing the GO that further investigation would bring all the facts to light.
The CID said it had received information on landowners from the CRDA, listed the properties in categories 4,5,6 and mapped the information on site. Most of the people who gave Category 4 plots belonged to the Telugu Desam Party and have tried unsuccessfully to register the plots at the Mangalagiri Sub-Registration Office. These individuals bought land from the assignees under registered sales contracts by paying nominal amounts, later given their land to LPS, and some of them even sold the developed land at exorbitant prices.
In another surprising piece of evidence, the CID had said that Guntur’s joint collector, Ch. Sreedhar, had given verbal instructions to the Tahsildar, Thullur, to return all original land registry entries from RSR, FMB, Adangals and 1B to JC’s office. The CID recorded the testimony of the then Tahsildar Tirupathi Venkateswarlu, who acted as Thullur Tahsildar from September to November 2014. He was replaced by Anne Sudhir.
The whole conspiracy came to light when collector Guntur’s office wrote to Tahsildars of the three mandals, Thullur, Tadepalli, and Mangalagiri, that no revenue records were available and asked them to conduct a field study and find out who was in possession of assigned land . “The nature of the fraud is so clear that the then JC asked the Tahsildars to take possession of all revenue records and keep them in his room. Later in 2016, the office or the collector wrote a letter looking for records. It is obvious that only Dr. Sreedhar (then JC, Guntur) knew where the original land registry entries were and he had not presented the records to either his successor or the collector. The CID had already filed cases against Mr Sudheer and Mr Brahmananda Reddy, and further investigation would bring all the facts to light, ”said the CID.
The investigating agency had also cited a Supreme Court ruling that excluded judicial interference in cases under 482 Cr.PC and gave the police the power to investigate identifiable crimes and appeared to the High Court to revoke the stay and allow the continuation Investigations.