Land regularisation: Manju ordered tampering of records?

Hassan: In an embarrassment for the ruling Congress , the returning officer (RO) of  Arkalugudu has in a preliminary report claimed that as many as 1093 applications for regularisation of bagair hukum sites in the constituency were fraudulently approved on the directions of Arkalgudu MLA and Animal Husbandry Minister, A Manju.

While the sites were supposedly regularised over  four different meetings of the  Bagair Hukum Committee on February 24, March 3, March 16 and March 20, there was no mention of the issue in the proceedings of the first three meetings and the last did not appear to have been held at all, the report says.

The RO, who examined the cctv footage at the tahsildar’s office,  says although the proceedings of the committee says it met at 3 pm on March 20, the tahsildhar who is also its secretary, is seen entering the office only at 4.30 pm and  Mr Manju, who is its  chairman, is not seen arriving at all.

The report, a copy of which is with the Deccan Chronicle, says tahsildar Prasanna Murthy and case worker, Lakshmeesha appear to be in cahoots with the Minister and may have tampered with dates in the proceedings of the March 3 meeting with a whitener on his directions.  The inquiry was held following a complaint by BJP district unit president, Yoga Ramesh to Deputy Commissioner, Rohini Sindhuri on April 4. Mr Ramesh hopes to contest the coming assembly poll from Arkalgudu. The RO submitted his report  on April 6.