The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on a petition challenging the allotment of about 30 acres of land by the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh to a trust created in the name of late party leader Kushabhau Thakre in alleged violation of rules and at a throwaway price. A bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly
reserved the verdict after heated arguments by senior advocate and BJP leader Ravishankar Prasad and the lawyer of Akhil Bhartiya Upbhokta Congress, a consumers’ society registered in MP that had moved the top court.
He attempted to raise allotment of huge chunk of lands to several trusts in the name of prominent political figures by the Union government in the national capital.
While reserving its verdict, the bench directed the MP government to produce the original file relating to the allotment to Kushahau Thakre Trust to enable the court to examine certain correspondence between the trust officials and the functionaries of the state on the issue. The state was given two days to produce the documents.
In response to Mr Prasad’s allegation that nearly 300 such allotments had been made by the Union government, the bench told him that it had examined the list of such allotments and the number was not as high as mentioned by him but within “hundred”. Mr Prasad had argued that if uniform parameters were to be applied for all trusts created in the name of the political leaders, then all such allotments made by the Union government were open to scrutiny of the top court.
According to the ABUC petition, the MP government had reserved 30 acres of land in “advance” in Basvadiya village for the Thakre trust on September 25, 2004 while it was registered only on October 6, 2004.
“Hence the reservation of the land without the trust being registered was wholly illegal and contrary to the established procedure prescribed by law,” the petitioner society alleged.
However, MP government counsel Ranjit Kumar and Mr Prasad, appearing for the trust, said the laws governing the charitable trust provide that a trust was “deemed” to be established the day some persons join hands to create it and the formal registration could take place later.