Opposition puts the government on mat

Regretting the fact that the Adarsh scam had brought disgrace to Maharashtra in its golden jubilee year, the Opposition on Wednesday urged former chief minister Ashok Chavan to disclose the names of his rivals who had given ' supari' to fix him in the scandal.

Cornering the Congress- NCP government over Adarsh, the BJP- led opposition in the Assembly, demanded a Joint Legislative Committee ( JLC) probe into it.

Leading the charge, leader of opposition Eknath Khadse sought stringent action against the bureaucrats involved in the scam, including suspension and filing of criminal cases against them. Inaugurating the debate on Adarsh in the lower house, Khadse said the Opposition had submitted a list of 33 similar scams to the Governor.

" When Prithiviraj Chavan took over the reins of the State, he promised a clean administration but unfortunately retained tainted Ministers and officers in his team," he said. The opposition leader said the file for allotment of land for the controversial project was first brought before the then chief minister Manohar Joshi in 1997 when there was a Shiv Sena- BJP government in the state, but the proposal was rejected.

Later, it came to the Revenue Minister in the same government who too turned it down. Khadse virtually held former Congress MLC Kanhaiyalal Gidwani chiefly responsible for the scam, saying he had written several letters to various Secretaries and Ministers seeking favours for the society. The Gidwani family owned three flats in the society, he said, adding many documents in the Adarsh files were replies to his letters.

The plot on which the 31- storey building stands came under the Coastal Regulatory Zone ( CRZ) and hence could not have been allotted, Khadse said. Pointing out that initially there were just 30 members in the society, he said the number kept on increasing as the file moved. Every bureaucrat who cleared the file, got one flat. " It was one- signature, one- flat formula evolved by the bureaucrats," he quipped.

He alleged that several top bureaucrats incuding former Urban Development Secretary Ramanand Tiwari, Deputy Secretary P V Deshmukh, Subhash Lala, Principal Secretary to former Chief Minister S K Shinde, and former BMC Chief Jairaj Phatak were among the beneficiaries.

The Leader of Opposition said a portion of adjoining Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport ( BEST) land was improperly used by the Society and about 80 metres approach road was reduced to 18 metres, virtually shutting the way for ambitious water transport project from Nariman Point to Uran.

Khadse said objections raised by Managing Director of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority Ajit Nimbalkar were overruled.

He lamented that though the CBI was probing the scam, it had not yet filed an FIR in the case.