Chandigarh: The enforcement directorate (ED) has provisionally attached immovable properties valued at Rs 834.03 crore belonging to real estate companies – EMAAR India and MGF Developments Ltd – involving former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and the former director, directorate of town and country planning, Trilok Chand Gupta.
Stating that, the said properties, covering 401.65 acres are spread in 20 villages in Gurugram district, Haryana and Delhi, an ED statement held that the case subsequent to the charges that EMAAR-MGF coloniser companies in collusion with Hooda and Gupta, acquired land at undervalued prices which led to significant losses to both, the public and the government.
The latest development was part of an ongoing investigation into a money laundering case connected to the issuance of a licence by the department of town and country planning (DTCP) in 2010 for a residential plotted colony in Sector 65 and 66 of Gurugram. The ED probe is subsequent to an FIR registered by the CBI under various sections of IPC and the prevention of corruption Act, 1988 in which 14 colonisers were also accused besides Hooda and Gupta and the two real estate companies named above.
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There were allegations of cheating landowners and the state of Haryana by exploiting the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, through which the accused were alleged to have issued notification under Section 4 and 6 of the said Act to compel the landowners to sell their land at prices at lower than market rates. The said companies then allegedly obtained letters of intent (LOIs) and licences fraudulently, causing substantial losses to the landowners and the state government while reaping huge wrongful gains.
The original case dated back to June 2, 2009, when the Congress-led Haryana government under Bhupinder Singh Hooda had allegedly issued a notification under Section 4 of the said Act, affecting over 1,417 acre land across Sectors 58 to 63 and 65 to 67 of Gurugram. Subsequently, a notification under Section 6 of said Act covered about 850 acre of this land and during the period between these notifications, about 600 acre land was selectively released from acquisition proceedings, enabling the grant of LOIs and licences to the accused coloniser companies.
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Stating that the probe was still on, the ED investigation held that acquisition of land for HUDA was never the real intent and it was alleged to have been only a scheme so that farmers who may or may not have sold their lands to builders otherwise, were forced to give it to builders under the disguise of one or other agreement due to impending fear of acquisition proceedings.
