Scams are on a full swing in Maharashtra. It seems that the state government wants to have a competition with the central government as far as scams are concerned. After the Adarsh Society scam, another big land scam has caught heat, namely, the allotment of Maharashtra Housing Board land to political leaders at throwaway prices, which was revealed when MHADA went for an interim inquiry to know the status of its land.
Land grabbing by leaders in the name of their social and educational organisations is a matter of concern, since these lands are not used for social causes, but for commercial purposes. Interestingly, the MHADA land was allotted to leaders during the governance period of the same chief minister allegedly involved in the Adarsh scam.
On one hand, people in Mumbai face all sorts of problems while looking for a house, while on the other, leaders are misusing their power and easily grabbing lands.
The Maharashtra Housing Board was formed so as to provide houses to the common people within their budget, but it has clearly been ruined by the state’s leaders.
Today, the rate of a house constructed by MHADA is out of the reach of the common man. 67 MHADA plots reserved for residential construction were arbitrarily allotted and as per the interim report of MHADA, 20 hectares of land was allotted to leaders and their organisations during 1999 to 2003.
All laws and rules were forgotten while allotting the reserved plots when Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Sinde were in power, with the beneficiaries being the likes of Madhukar Chavan, Priya Dutt, Nawab Malik, Jayant Patil, Abu Asim Azmi and many more.
It is indeed unfortunate that people who deserve the plots are being cheated and dirty politics is in play. While the people who deserve the houses do not get them, the leaders they have trusted are cheating them out of the land they deserve and minting money out of it.