This may hurt, but it matters......right?

Lt-Gen Harwant Singh( Retd )

ULTIMATE IN CROOKEDNESS: NO SCAM OF RECENT TIMES MATCHES ADARSH HOUSING SOCIETY IN THE RANGE OF WRONG DOINGS

The report of the judicial commission appointed to investigate the Adarsh Housing Society ( AHS ) scam has been rejected by the state government of Maharashtra led by Shri Prithviraj Chavan, and this soon after the congress party’s vice president’s pledge to root out corruption from the country. Prithviraj Chavan is a congress chief minister and could not possibly have missed this stance of his party’s vice president, which received vide publicity.

While there have been innumerable scams in recent times, but none matches the AHS scam: in grandeur and range of wrong doings. Though Mumbai has seen land sharks and builder mafias indulge in every manner of irregularity with full connivance of a whole range of government and municipal authorities, AHS stands alone as the ultimate in crookery, collusion, fraud and greed. It has been a black hole that sucked in all and sundry: from the highest in the state, bureaucracy, wheeler-dealers, money launderers and even the military’s brass.

ALL THAT IS ROTTEN

There has been free flow of false certificates/affidavits, quid pro quo, bending of rules, fudging of land documents, flouting of service rules, manipulations, disappearance of files and land records, favouritism, malfeasance, deceit, flouting of building rules, breach of Indian Navy’s security, ‘benami’ deals and money laundering. All these run as a warp thread in the tapestry of this deceitful enterprise. Adarsh stands tall as an edifice of corruption and epitomizes all that is rotten in our country.

BUILT ON ARMY LAND

This high voltage AHS case has a somewhat sordid history. The land on which Adarsh building stands belonged to the army, where there was a ( known as ‘Khukhri park’) with a barrack on one side. It was given to the army by the civil administration some decades earlier in exchange for army land it took in another area to make a bypass etc. As such it would have come on the records of the Defence Estates Department, (component of the Ministry of Defence. ) Either this was not done due to an oversight and it remained on the records of the civil government, but more likely it was on the Defence Estates Department’s records. The point to note is that the land was under the occupation of the army for a few decades.

It appears that the Defence Estates Officers came up with the idea to raise a couple of flats on this prime land and make a killing. Now there is no provision under which military’s land can be made available for a housing complex for other than its own serving personnel. Only if this land could be shown as that of civil government and to silence the military, the project be given such a name as would draw some public sympathy ( for Kargil widows) and army too, be given part of this pie, then no objections would arise. So some records went missing and the land came back on civil government records.

WEAK FOUNDATION
The Defence Estate Officer, Shri RC Thakur became the president of the AHS and took two flats for himself. The Mumbai Sub Area commander joined in and pulled in some senior officers into this enterprise. Later he was brought back as Area Commander to complete the job. This building, which was planned to be six floors high rose to 31 stories. What of its foundation! Was the foundation initially laid to cater to such a high-rise building and was this initial projection of there being only six floors, a ruse. Were additional floors added to simply accommodate more claimants, for a place in this edifice of corruption, otherwise erected on weak foundation to cater for six floors.!

MAKE AN EXAMPLE

Any one who was even remotely connected with helping this project joined in to take a piece of the cake. Here was an opportunity to make millions and no holds were barred. Integrity, rules and propriety were flung out of the window. It was a huge carcass where all hues of vultures descended and bit into.
The point to ponder is the disposal of this nefarious edifice of greed and action that needs to be taken against all those who twisted rules out of shape, gave false certificates, colluded in this wrong doing. Like the Coca Cola project this too must be demolished and some quantity of debris left at the site as a constant reminder that corruption and malfeasance will be brought down in this manner and there is no escape for the wrong doers. The guilty must be made to face the rigours of an effective Lokpal.
Defence Forces of the nation persistently wronged more