New Delhi/Rohtak: In more trouble for senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the CBI booked the former Haryana chief minister on cheating and corruption charges in connection with land acquisition in Gurgaon that favoured private builders and also conducted searches at 20 locations including his Rohtak residence. The Congress as well as Hooda,71, hit out at the Centre over the raids by the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI), calling it nothing but “political vendetta” to suppress his voice and defame him, reports PTI. The CBI also named in the FIR Additional Chief Secretary Haryana Trilok Chand Gupta, who was the then chief Administrator, HUDA, along with 15 builders including DLF, Emaar MGF, Buzz Hotels, Ansals whose official premises were searched during the operation in morning, officials said. The searches were carried out in Delhi and Gurgaon.
It booked Hooda, Gupta and the builders for alleged criminal conspiracy and cheating under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act in connection with alleged irregularities in the acquisition of land. Hooda is already facing CBI probes in two cases that related to Manesar land aquisition and allotment of an institutional plot to Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), the publisher of National Herald, in Panchkula. In both the cases, charge sheets have been filed. The third case against Hooda and others was registered on the directions of the Supreme Court on November 1, 2017 when the CBI was entrusted with the probe into alleged irregularities in the process of acquisition of 1,417.07 acres of land between 2009 and 2012 for sector 58 to 63 and 65 to 67 in Gurgaon, CBI spokesperson Nitin Wakankar said. The government had issued the notification on June 2, 2009, he said. Hooda was the chief minister at that time. Subsequently, another notification was issued for acquisition of 850.10 acres of land on May 31, 2010, officials said.
The CBI claimed that during the notification period approximately 616.40 acres of land were released in favour of developers. It emerged during the preliminary enquiry that the objective of the HUDA for acquiring the land to ensure availability of developed land at affordable prices to the public at large and to the economically weaker sections of the society has not been achieved. The agency alleged that private builders entered into a criminal conspiracy with Hooda, a two-time chief minister, and Trilok Chand Gupta with an intent to cheat land owners. Not just the Congress but prominent opposition leaders including West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal flayed the Narendra Modi government for using the agencies to harass and intimidate the opposition. Strongly condemning the CBI booking Hooda and raiding his residences in connection with a land allotment case, Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma said the action coming ahead of the Lok Sabha polls and the bypolls in Haryana, was a clear indication of the Centre using agencies to harass and intimidate political opponents.
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee, many of whose party leaders were arrested and interrogated in chit fund scams by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), also slammed Modi and the BJP. “Political vendetta continues. BJP and its ‘allies’ comprising multiple government agencies harassing all allies of opposition. From Kolkata to Delhi and beyond,” she said in a series of tweets. Replying to her tweets, Kejriwal whose Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) too has been at the receiving end of the CBI, alleged that Modi was fighting the political battle through the enforcement agencies. “From Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati in UP to Mamata Banerjee in Bengal and AAP in Delhi, Modi-Shah duo has spared no political opponent,” he said, reports IANS. Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav dubbed the CBI as “BBI” or “BJP Bureau of Investigation”. “Whoever joins hands with the BJP gets a clean chit and becomes Raja Harishchandra and those who criticise them are hounded by the agencies. Even my father was not spared, because he is a critic of the RSS and the BJP led Central government,” he tweeted.
