Chandigarh: In May last year, the Punjab Vigilance Bureau registered an FIR in what has come to be known as the guava orchard scam. Nearly 100 suspects, including at least a dozen government officers, are alleged to have defrauded the state housing department of Rs 140 crore from 2017 to 2021.
The wives of senior IAS officers — excise and taxation commissioner Varun Roojam and Ferozepur deputy commissioner Rajesh Dhiman — are among the beneficiaries. Roojam was the chief administrator of the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) during some period of the scam, while Dhiman served as the GMADA additional chief administrator from 2017 to 2021.
Last week, the Enforcement Directorate, which started investigation into the proceeds of the crime based on the investigation of the vigilance bureau, came knocking at the doors of some of the accused, including the two bureaucrats.
ThePrint explains how the multi-crore ‘scam’ played out and how the lid blew off the alleged irregularities in Punjab.
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How it began
In 2016, the GMADA started work on the Aerotropolis Residential Project for which it began acquiring over 1,600 acre of land. The project was conceived as an extension of the already built Aerocity near the international airport in SAS Nagar (Mohali) district. Apart from commercial units, over 8,500 residential units were envisaged as part of the project.
For Aerotropolis Pocket A, a notification under the Land Acquisition Act was issued on 6 February, 2019 for the acquisition of 737 acre of land in Bakarpur, Naraingarh, Safipur, Chhat and Rurka.
According to the status report filed by the Vigilance Bureau in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the accused led by property dealer Bhupinder Singh along with Mukesh Jindal and Vikas and Vishal Bhandari started buying land under acquisition based on information leaked by “higher officials” in the GMADA.
This enabled the accused to buy land at the prevailing market price, which was much less than the compensation rates. In some cases, the accused allegedly forced landowners to sell plots at unfair prices.
The other aspect of the irregularities involved the accused drawing compensation on non-existent assets. Section 27 of the Act provides that the compensation to be paid will include the market value of all the assets present in a plot. These assets can be buildings, tubewells, pipelines, agriculture produce, and trees — either fruit bearing or otherwise — and plants.
The Vigilance Bureau informed the court that the accused not only bought land based on inside information to become eligible for inflated compensation, they also decided to maximise their gains through guava orchards on their plots.
In many cases, it said, the accused only leased land to become eligible for compensation for the guava orchards.
Role of revenue authorities
After the acquisition began in February 2019, the GMADA land acquisition collector (LAC) asked for a preliminary survey by revenue personnel to identify landowners along with the details of their plots.
The Vigilance Bureau report states that patwari Bachhiter Singh tampered with the land records dating from 2016 to 2021 to show that the plots owned by the accused had flourishing guava orchards.
“In reality, 90 percent of the land was under wheat and paddy cultivation and only on the remaining, the accused had bothered to plant guava saplings,” social activist and whistleblower Satnam Daun told ThePrint.
In November 2020, the LAC asked the horticulture department to assess the value of orchards following which horticulture officials allegedly came up with ‘tailor-made’ assessment reports.
Role of horticulture officers
According to the Vigilance Bureau, horticulture development officer Jaspreet Singh Sidhu had to evaluate the fruit trees in about 180 acre of land. Sidhu made only one inspection, with the vigilance report mentioning that he got photocopies of the land records for preparing the ‘tailor-made’ reports.
The records had visible overwriting/additions/alterations to show the presence of orchards, it said, adding that they falsely showed an unbelievable number of trees on the land owned by the accused.
In one acre of land, the maximum number of guava trees which can be grown is about 130, said the Vigilance Bureau’s FIR. But the horticulture department reported that as many as 2,000, at times 2,500 trees, a ploy to increase the compensation.
The department is also accused of falsely reporting that all the trees were of fruit bearing age as the compensation also factors in potential fruit bearing capacity. It also faked that the trees were productive for 20 years to ensure that the accused got the maximum possible compensation, the Vigilance Bureau said.
Checking of orchards ‘ignored’
Once the revenue department and horticulture reports were received in March 2021, LAC Jagdish Singh Johal calculated the payoffs of each landowner and prepared the ground for release of their compensation.
In June 2021 before the release of the money to the first set of beneficiaries, the then GMADA chief administrator Pradeep Aggarwal issued a note that the compensation amount should not be released till the land acquisition collector carried out a physical check to check every plot having orchards.
The LAC claimed that he carried out the exercise and that all other cross checks were done by the GMADA naib tehsildar. Subsequently, Rs 16.80 crore was released to eight beneficiaries .
After the first set of payments was made, the horticulture director wrote to the land acquisition collector in July not to release any more compensation.
This directive was ignored with Johal seeking the permission of the then chief administrator Vipul Ujjwal to release the pending compensation payments, said the vigilance report.
The Vigilance Bureau noted that the file to seek permission was not routed as required through the additional chief administrator. No mention was made of the physical cross-checking required before making the payment, it added.
Compensation worth Rs 123 crore was released to 101 beneficiaries without any checks on the ground, the Vigilance Bureau report mentioned. Bhupinder Singh and his family members got Rs 24 crore while Jindal’s family received Rs 20 crore, it added.
Rajesh Dhiman remained the GMADA additional chief administrator for 5 years from 2017 to 2021.
Apart from being closely involved with the execution of Aerotropolis, he was dealing with most of the aspects of the project. A few days before his transfer on 29 June, 2021, Dhiman was asked by the chief administrator to carry out physical checks of some guava orchards.
Dhiman’s wife Jasmeen Kaur got Rs 1.67 crore as compensation for her guava orchard, the Vigilance Bureau said, adding that she bought land along with Bhupinder Singh, his wife and daughter.
From December 2019 onwards, Varun Roojam remained the GMADA chief administrator for a while. His wife Simarpreet Kaur is said to have got Rs 58.8 lakh. However, Roojam’s specific role is not known as the Vigilance Bureau is completely silent about it.
Scam comes to fore
Mohali-based activist Satnam Daun got the tip-off from a Bakarpur villager who sought his help to get proper compensation from the GMADA. “He told me that despite his land having many trees that were planted decades ago, the GMADA was not paying compensation while crores were released for some other plots which were recently bought by property dealers,” says Daun.
“I filed an RTI application to GMADA seeking details of how the guava trees — acquired by the government — had been utilised. I asked if the wood of the trees were used for any purpose and where the guavas had been sold. Then I started visiting the plots and found that in most cases, there were no trees at all. In some cases, saplings were planted but they were only a foot high. I did videography and handed over all the details to CM Bhagwant Mann whom I happened to meet at a function,” Daun added.
After the FIR was registered in May last year, more than two dozen people have been arrested while 96 people, including private beneficiaries and government officials, were named as accused in the case.
According to the Vigilance Bureau, more than 50 people are absconding and another three dozen have got anticipatory bail. It has approached the Supreme Court for the cancellation of the court relief. The bureau filed a challan in the case in July last year.
Patwaris Bachhiter Singh, Surinder Pal and Surinderpal Singh, GMADA naib tehsildar Jaskaran Singh, horticulture development officers Jaspreet Singh Sidhu and Vaishali and PCS officer Jagdish Singh Johal, who served as GMADA land acquisition officer, are among the accused. Sidhu was arrested in January after the high court cancelled his anticipatory bail.
Following orders of the high court last year, many of the accused have been asked to return compensation money worth Rs 72 crore to the government. Nearly Rs 43 crore has been deposited so far.
Daun told ThePrint that another aspectof the case are yet to be probed by the Vigilance Bureau. “These plot owners had claimed heavy subsidies from the horticulture department for planting trees and for the equipment including greenhouses that they used. A probe into the amount of subsidy claimed needs to be done,” he added.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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