It's rotten. Maharashtra's mangoes are smelling of scam

The BJP has found itself at the receiving end since a 84-year-old farmer from Dhule, Dharma Patil, died in Mumbai on January 29, less than a week after consuming poison.

The Opposition has claimed that Patil consumed the poison outside chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s office at the sixth floor of Mantralaya as the government failed to deliver justice to him. Patil had received compensation of Rs 4 lakh for his five-acre farm whereas his neighbour Kisan Girase got Rs 1.98 crore for one-acre farmland, though both of them had planted mango trees.

The case has exposed the chinks in the state’s administration as well as the unholy practices adopted while granting compensation to land. Girase stands accused of paying a bribe of Rs 1 crore to the officials from land acquisition department to get higher compensation.

At the same time, a nexus between officials and land-selling agents also has come to fore. Finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar admits that the nexus exists. “The government does not make any discrimination between the beneficiaries.

It is the officials who misinterpret and take disadvantage of the government schemes,” he told me. It has become a trend over a couple of years to plant mango trees in farm land to increase its value at the time of land acquisition even though the climate does not suit the trees.

Water resources minister Girish Mahajan points that agents purchase land from poor farmers at throwaway prices, “import” mango trees from Konkan and demand higher price at the time of acquisition. The mango trees are literally “replanted” to create an impression that they exist in a particular farm land for many years. As per rules, if a farm land has mango trees its values grows multifold. In some cases, the government has given Rs 1 crore for one acre farm land when the actual price was Rs 10 lakh because of the mango trees.

“This is not possible without the direct involvement of government officials,” Mahajan admitted. “They know it better which land would be acquired for which project.”

He pointed that the government had carried survey of the proposed super communication highway between Nagpur and Mumbai, known as Samruddhi Corridor, using Google maps to count the number of trees on the patch before the project was announced. “If we had not done that the agents would have replanted mango trees everywhere on the corridor making the project economically unviable,” Mahajan said.

The government has reserved Rs 10,000 crore only for compensation to land acquisition. The nexus exists for a long time. Patil’s case has given the government an opportunity to break it once and all.

 (Courtesy of Mail Today)

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