Maharashtra Sadan scam: ACB files charge sheet against Chhagan Bhujbal

The Maharashtra Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Wednesday filed its charge sheet in the Maharashtra Sadan scam against senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal in a court. Other than Bhujbal, who swas the PWD minister during the previous Congress-NCP regime in the state, his son Pankaj and nephew Sameer, as well as 14 others have also been chargesheeted in the case. The charge sheet, which runs into 20,000 pages, contains statements of 70 witnesses.

In the charge sheet, the agency has alleged that rules were blatantly violated in order to favour a developer. The developer was told by the accused that if he wanted to develop a plot in Andheri, then he would have to construct the Sadan and another government property at Malabar Hill, stated the charge sheet. Moreover, while the sale value of the Andheri plot after development was pegged at Rs207 crore by the PWD department in 2006, valuation done by a private company in 2011 showed that the sale realisation of the said property was around Rs4,000 crore, the charge sheet has alleged.

According to the ACB sources, the case is entirely based on documentary evidence, such as fund transfer and bank transactions. The charge sheet also mentions elaborate role of each person involved in the crime and the profit each person made in the alleged scam. The document also mentions the criminal conspiracy meetings that had taken place.

“Accused developer Krishna Chamankar, who was developing a slum neigbouring to the Andheri RTO plot, was told that the PWD would allow him to develop the plot if he developed Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi and another government property in Malabar Hill. The ideal thing for the government should have been to float tenders for the Sadan and Malabar Hill properties, but Chamankar, who was not entitled to bid as he was not a Class I contractor, was asked to develop Sadan and the other property in lieu of developing Andheri RTO plot,” alleged a government source.

Sources also claimed that in construction of Sadan, contractors earned an 80 per cent profit, while according to the government circular, such contractors are entitled to only 20 per cent gains. “Books of accounts were fudged to show that the profit earned was only one per cent,” they added.

The ACB had, in June last year, registered two FIRs against Bhujbal. The first one was related to alleged irregularities in allotment of a prime plot at Kalina in Mumbai to a developer. The second case was for alleged rampant corruption and large-scale irregularities in the construction of the new Maharashtra Sadan, the state government’s guest house in New Delhi.

The PWD, under Bhujbal, had then allegedly awarded sub-contracts to firms in blatant violation of rules in the Sadan case. All these firms were floated or controlled by the members of the Bhujbal family.

The other accused who were named in the FIR were Arun Deodhar, Devdutt Marathe, Bipin Sankhe, Krishna Chamankar, Pranita Chamankar, Tanvir Sheikh, Sanjay Joshi, Manik Shaha, Deepak Deshpande, Anil Kumar Gaikwad, Pravina Chamankar, Prasanna Chamankar, Iram Tanvir Sheikh and Geeta Joshi.

The state ACB had initiated a probe against Bhujbal and his family following a complaint lodged by Aam Aadmi Party leader Anjali Damania, who had alleged that there had been rampant corruption and large-scale irregularities in the construction of the new Maharashtra Sadan.

The new Maharashtra Sadan was built at the cost of Rs100 crore when Congress-NCP coalition was in power in Maharashtra.