Patna, Oct. 18: The Patna High Court today asked the Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority (BIADA) to file its reply to a petition, seeking direction from the court for a CBI investigation into the alleged irregularities in its land/plot allotment.

A division bench of Justice T Meena Kumari and Justice Vikash Jain, while posting the matter for further hearing on January 17, passed the direction after giving a brief hearing to both the petitioner and BIADA.

The petition, filed by ex-MLC P.K. Sinha and social activist Sarwar Khan Warsi, alleged that plots were allotted “to the high and mighty close to the chief minister without publishing advertisements and tender that caused loss to the tune of thousands of crores to the state exchequer”. It added: “The chief minister is deeply involved in favouritism and nepotism in allotting land in favour of wards or relatives of two cabinet ministers, MLAs, MLCs and bureaucrats.”

The petition, filed through advocate Dinu Kumar, also prayed for cancellation of “the plots in question as they have been allotted without following proper procedures”.

Kumar submitted that BIADA Financial and Service Regulation, 2007 came into effect from December 27, 2007, which removed the provision of issuing advertisements and tenders for allotment and authorized its managing director for the allotment of land which is in complete violation of article 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

About 1,700 people have been allotted plots after the regulation was passed on December 27, 2007 by doing away with the provision of tendering, the counsel submitted. “The regulation was brought by the government only to give undue favour in the allotment,” the advocate added.

Referring to the report of the chief secretary, who conducted the inquiry on the chief minister’s directive, the petition said that chief secretary has not taken into the legal proposition decided by the Supreme Court that no land shall be allotted without advertisement and tender.