Nearly a week after he was elected as the Lok Sabha MP from Baharampur in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Yusuf Pathan has received a notice from the BJP-run Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) for allegedly encroaching a plot of land that belongs to the civic body. The cricketer-turned-politician has been given two weeks to clear the encroachment, the civic body said, denying that it was a "political move". On Thursday, the issue came to light after former Vijay Pawar, BJP corporator from Ward 14, wrote a letter to Standing Committee Chairman Dr Sheetal Mistry, demanding that the encroachment be cleared off the land and it be fenced immediately by the civic body. Pathan made the request to purchase the land in March 2012. The notice served to Pathan on June 6 — two days after the Lok Sabha results — by the land estate department of the VMC states, "This is to state that the VMC had (earlier in March 2012) received a request from you to allot a land measuring 978 square metres in TP Scheme Number 22 and Final Plot Number 90. As per the process, your application was referred to the Standing Committee and thereafter to the General Board after the valuation committee decided the minimum upset value." It further reads, "Thereafter the application was forwarded to the state government of Gujarat for approval in order to lease the land for a period of 99 years under a special case without conducting an auction. However, as per the reply received from the Urban Development Department on June 9, 2014, the request to lease the said land to you was rejected. The same had been communicated to you vide a letter. However, it has come to light that you have encroached upon the said land of the VMC and you are hereby directed to clear the encroachment at the earliest." On the notice, Pawar said, "Pathan had sent a letter requesting to be allowed to purchase the said land on March 3, 2012 and offered a price of Rs 57,000 per square meter. The said proposal was placed before the General Board and cleared without any opposition on June 8, 2012. Subsequently, the state government disapproved of the proposal and the issue was closed. However, Pathan went ahead and encroached upon the land, creating a compound wall of his residence. If the VMC can remove encroachments of huts and other settlements from government lands, then why should Pathan be allowed to keep the encroachment?" Warning that action may be taken after two weeks, Standing Committee Chairman Mistry said, "The issue (of the encroachment on VMC land) had come to our notice. It was also raised by BJP Corporator Vijay Pawar. We had already given a notice to Yusuf Pathan on June 6 and also given him a time of about two weeks. It is a reasonable time for Pathan to clear the encroachment on his own. If he does not comply with the notice, we will proceed with further action." Denying that it was a political move, Mistry said that the issue had been taken up as it had come to light that Pathan had allegedly encroached on a part of the VMC land. "I am not aware about the political move but this is a procedure of encroachment removal after it has come to our notice," Mistry said.
