Mollah on Tuesday. (Amit Datta)

Calcutta, Sept. 1: Land and land reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah today said he had visited the Vedic resort a “good number of times’’.

“I suffer from bronchial and throat problems. So, I have gone to Vedic Village a number of times and had coconut water there. Naturopathy and Chinese medicine treatment are also available there. The doctor who treats me is very good and doesn’t charge fees. Nowadays, he comes to my home. But I won’t go there now as you people are after me,” Mollah told a media conference at his Writers’ chamber.

The minister’s personal integrity has never been a subject of speculation but disclosures such as these are bound to raise questions of conflict of interest and propriety.

C.M. Pradyumna, the ayurvedacharya at the Vedic Village spa, told The Telegraph: “Patient information is confidential, but as he mentioned in public today, he suffers from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) for which he has been consulting me from August 9, 2005.”

The director of medicine at Vedic Village said Mollah was one among “3,781 patients” from India and abroad “treated” at the Sanjeeva Spa.

Whether such “therapies” can be called Ayurveda treatment, which involves a long-term regimen, is debatable. Many spas offer “wellness rejuvenation therapy sessions” that seek to trace their roots to Ayurveda.

‘Will tell wife, not cabinet’

In another ironical twist, the minister railed against the proposed IT township on 1,200 acres involving the Vedic promoters and a government agency. “People are being killed. Land mafia is ruling there. A democratic government should not pursue such a project. If the government still goes ahead, it will be out,’’ he said.

However, Mollah said he would not raise the issue in the cabinet. “I am a CPM minister and the cabinet involves ministers of other Left Front allies, too. So, I won’t raise this in the cabinet. But I will tell my wife and go to my party and the market to say that the IT township should not happen this way,” he said.

Such statements are expected to make the CPM leadership further wary of assigning greater responsibilities to Mollah, who at one time was projected by some as the possible deputy or successor to chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.