The alleged industrial land “scam” in Bihar became wider and murkier on Sunday with the Opposition RJD accusing the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government of allotting land belonging to a state-owned sick PSU to a private tractor manufacturer at a significantly lower price and under questionable circumstances.
Citing the transfer of land of the Fatuha-based Bihar Scooters Limited (BSL) to the Sonalika Group’s tractor manufacturing arm, International Tractors Limited (ITL), in 2009 as an “indisputable instance of gross wrongdoing” by the Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority (BIADA), senior RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui reiterated his party’s demand for a CBI probe into all industrial land allotments in Bihar executed since 2007.
According to Mr Siddiqui, who is Leader of the Opposition in Bihar Assembly, in January 2007 BIADA, cancelled the allotment of 26.86 acres of land made in 1974 to BSL and took possession of BSL’s assets because the Bihar State Industrial Development Corporation (BSIDC) had failed to pay a pending sum of `59.93 lakhs for the allotted land.
While BSL’s assets were duly ascertained in 2007 to be worth `9.73 crores, Mr Siddiqui said the land was allotted to ITL with the receipt of only `1.60 crores.