Congress alleges scams worth Rs1 lakh crore by Narendra Modi govt

Gujarat's rapid industrial development has attracted much national attention, but the opposition Gujarat Congress has highlighted the dark side of this picture. In an elaborate presentation with 1,000 pages of documents to the president of India, Pratibha Patil, a group of MPs and MLAs from the state alleged corruption scams worth a whopping Rs1 lakh crore.

These allegations are mainly based on the huge tracts of land given to industrialists at highly subsidized rates - much lower than the stated jantri rates and phenomenally lower than the market rates - without auction.

For instance, according to a statement released by Congress, Tata Consultancy Services was allotted 1.03 lakh sq meters of land at the rate of Rs1,100 per sq metre. The minimum Jantri rate for this land is Rs19,000 and its market rate is quoted as Rs30,000. This deal, the statement claims, has caused a loss of Rs298.23 crore to the state exchequer. Seven such instances around Gandhinagar district itself have been given.

“In this district itself, a loss of Rs 5,197 crore has been estimated. These details have been sought under the Right to Information (RTI) Act from the concerned departments,” the statement said.

‘Radia struck secret deal with chief minister’
Substantiating the murmurs of Niira Radia having bargained the deal for Tata's Nano car manufacturing plant in Sanand, the Congress underlined in its statement that the controversial lobbyist had negotiated a deal worth Rs33,000 crore in a clandestine understanding with the chief minister of Gujarat.

“1100 acres of land has been allotted without auction to Tata Motors at Rs900 per sq metres. Cost of the land recovered is Rs400 crore whereas market rate of the said land is about Rs10,000 per sq mtr. Tata Motor has been given facility of payment of said land cost by installment of Rs50 crore each at the interval of every 6 months.

The loan of Rs9,570 crore has been given to Tata Motors at 0.10% interest with moratorium of 20 years. It may be noted that that the total cost of the said project is stated to be Rs2,200 crore, against that total project cost, a loan of Rs9,570 crore has been given which is more than 4.25 times more. It may be noted that no financial institution will, in any circumstances, grant loan more than 100% of the total project cost,” the party statement said.
String of other scams highlighted by Congress.

A long list of other alleged scams have been highlighted by the party. A land allotment to Adani Group for Mundra Port & Mundra Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Re1 per sq mtr, grossly lower than its market rates.

Allotment of Prime Land of Navsari Agricultural University (NAU) without auction for a 7 star hotel to Chhatrala Hotel Group. This deal was allegedly brokered by the chief minister through his office. The government could have earned about Rs650 crore from sale of said piece of the land but has shown only Rs224 crore.

Huge land allotment for Salt Chemicals near Pakistan border to the companies said to be related to BJP Leader Venkaiya Naidu. The said tract of land is near no man's zone along the international border.

Prime Land allotment without auction to Bharat Hotels at Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway in Ahmedabad.