Status quo on Vaghela’s trust land

AHMEDABAD, July 10: The Gujarat High Court yesterday ordered status quo till further orders on the allotment of land in Sector 8, Gandhinag...

AHMEDABAD, July 10: The Gujarat High Court yesterday ordered status quo till further orders on the allotment of land in Sector 8, Gandhinagar, to the Gandhinagar Charitable Trust (GCT) at a very low rate. Chief Minister Shankersinh Vaghela is a member of the trust, and the BJP has alleged a scandal in the land allotment.

A division bench of acting Chief Justice R A Mehta and Justice N N Mathur also issued notices to the five trustees of the GCT (including Vaghela), the Education Minister, the Chief Secretary and the secretaries of education and roads and building (R&B) departments in the case. The next date of hearing has been fixed for July 28.

BJP legislators Haren Pandya and Yatin Oza had filed the petition challenging the State Government’s decision to allot the land to the GCT. The petitioners submitted that about 41,000 sq m of land had been allotted by the R&B Department to the trust through a government resolution on April 29 at a rate of Rs 200 per sq m. Another plot of 10,000 sq m area, they claimed, was given for a token price of Re 1 per sq m.

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The BJP MLAs alleged that as the actual value of the land was about Rs 4,000 per sq m, the total cost of the area allotted worked out to more than Rs 20 crore. But the GCT had paid a comparatively throwaway price of Rs 82 lakh, the two submitted. According to them, this sum was much lower than the price of the land even as per a government resolution of 1988.

Pandya and Oza also claimed that though the trust was to pay the first instalment for the land of Rs 41 lakh by July 28 and the second of the same amount by September 29, the entire money was paid just a few days ago, after the issue had come to light.

The BJP MLAs also questioned the Government’s contention that the land had been granted for educational purposes. None of the five trustees was an educationist, they pointed out. Besides Vaghela, the trustees include Damjibhai Laljibhai Shah, Vishnubhai Mafatlal Patel, Lakshminarayan Tulsidas Shroff and Nilaben Mayurbhai Modi.

Besides, the two pointed out, the trust was registered only in August last year and had done nothing so far in the field of education.

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The BJP MLAs also noted that as many as 73 applications for land allocation to set up educational institutions were currently pending with the Government. Claiming that these included applications for organisations like schools for the physically handicapped, the petitioners argued that a concession should have been given to these institutions and not the GCT.

Pandya and Oza even submitted a list of 68 organisations some of them known for their work in the field of education and contended that these had been awaiting land allotment for four years.

The Government, however, is sticking by its stand on the allotment. R&B Minister C K Raolji issued a statement on Tuesday reiterating that the GCT had been given the land to set up a medical and engineering college.