Bhubaneswar, Aug. 20: The co-operation department has recommended a vigilance inquiry into the alleged questionable allotment of plots at a prime location in the city by a co-operative society under its control.
Sources said influential people apart, members of the society and officials of the department were learnt to have received plots under this scheme.
Co-operation minister Damodar Rout said: “After the incident came to my knowledge, I recommended a vigilance probe. The government believes in transparency and no illegal activity will be allowed.”
Sources in the department said that under Capital Society Co-operative Limited, the co-operation department initiated a plotting scheme at Dumduma near Khandagiri in 1992-93. Around 800 plots were developed under the scheme, but several of them remained unsold for a long time due to lack of infrastructure development by the department.
In 2009-10, after the city rapidly expanded, officials of the co-operation department, without going for a fresh advertisement to invite applications from the public for these plots, took possession of them.
In some cases, the officials had managed to grab two or three plots under various schemes.
“In a particular case, the society even handed over a plot to a builder for constructing a road to connect his housing complex without taking the required permission and approval of the government. This is a gross violation of rules. Such irregularities could not have taken place without the knowledge of the top officials of the department,” admitted an official.
Sources said once the vigilance probe began, a number of officials of the department would fall in the vigilance net for their acts of omission and commission.
The state government has decided to develop a mechanism to save government land from squatters. Squads will be set up and an information collection system will be developed to keep a watch on squatters. Signboards and boundary demarcation pillars will be placed on vacant plots. Chief secretary Gokul Chandra Pati has made it clear that responsibility would be fixed on the squad and they would be held accountable if they failed to inspect the areas allotted to them on a regular basis and failed to report encroachments.
In another alleged land grabbing case, the Khurda district administration today ordered a probe to find out the people and the agency that built a 3-km road near the Chandka forest with an intention to grab government land. It has been alleged that some influential people of the BJD tried to grab more than 100 acres of government land on the outskirts of the city near the Chandaka forest. They have even raised boundary walls at a few places. However, the local sarpanch did not have any idea about the encroachment.
