Government officials favoured land grabbers in Gurgaon: IAS officer Pradeep Kasni

CHANDIGARH: Within a month of taking over as the commissioner of Gurgaon division, senior IAS officer Pradeep Kasni has sent a report to the Haryana government, explaining how revenue officials of the Millennium City conspired with land grabbers.

In his report sent to state chief secretary P K Gupta recently, Kasni revealed how government land worth crores in Harsaru village, which has almost become a part of the Gurgaon urban conglomerate, was illegally transferred to private companies three years ago. It was not taken back despite officials coming to know that the mutations of eight acres in six land deals were sanctioned in violation of orders of the Punjab and Haryana high court.

Now, Kasni has taken away all judicial/quasi-judicial powers and functions of Gurgaon's district revenue officer Purushottam Sharma, apart from debarring two more revenue officials from functioning "in view of their proven complicity in the matter in these fact-finding proceedings and an unmistakable lack of integrity and competence required of such sensitive assignments as the land related seats in Gurgaon and around". The commissioner has also ordered an FIR against then tehsildar Rajiv Sharma, who had sanctioned the mutations in 2011.

According to Kasni's report, the officials had sought to fraudulently transfer the title of highly valuable land of state government to private firms and companies. "Tehsildar Rajiv Sharma, while wrongfully sanctioning the mutations, has not only caused huge pecuniary loss to the state but also misrepresented facts all through and resorted to blatant lies most audaciously, stating that the numbers involved in the proposed mutations are not at all encumbered with any litigation, stay or orders of injunctions," the report says. Sharma is presently posted in Palwal.

"All have played in the hands of land grabbers, and it is a matter of record that the case submitted by the SDO (civil) was not even once permitted to be put up to the collector (DC) for whom the same was meant and to whom the same was addressed," Kasni added in the report.

"This again is not a mere case of administrative or professional misdemeanor but of a deeper and more malignant conspiratorial gang-up in the office of the collector in favour of the land mafias and to thwart the public interest for private gains and maybe to subserve one's own narrow selfish interests, for which these officials hanker after and manipulate their postings to such "lucrative posts," the report says.