Ex-Army chief V K Singh blamed for Mumbai's Adarsh housing row

MUMBAI: Members of scam-hit Adarsh Housing Society today accused former Army chief V K Singh of being responsible for the controversy surrounding the highrise that stirred a political storm in Maharashtra and claimed there was no illegality in construction of the building here.

Addressing a press conference here, they claimed the prime land in Colaba on which the highrise was built does not belong to Defence Ministry, as alleged, but to the state government, and demanded the structure be regularised.

The allottees of the 31-storey building cited RTI documents in support of their claim and said the criminal case made out against them by CBI has "fallen flat" after it had been established that the land does not belong to Defence Ministry.

It is the prosecution case that the land was actually meant to be a six-storey structure to house Kargil war heroes and their kin but was later extended to 31 floors allegedly without mandatory permission.

Brigadier (Retd) T K Sinha, ad-hoc Chairman of Adarsh Housing Society, accused V K Singh, now a Union Minister, of sparking the entire controversy and "misleading" the then Defence Minister A K Antony.