I am being targeted, I stopped illegal purchase of land: Eknath Khadse

There are claims that my wife Mandakini and son-in-law Girish Choudhary have purchased three acres of industrial land at Bhosari in Pune in an illegal manner; the land is, in fact, owned by the MIDC.

I refute the charge. They have purchased the land in a legal and transparent way. I have not given them any undue benefit owing to my position. The builder (Pune-based Hemant Gavande) who levelled the allegations is trying to save his skin by inappropriately dragging my name into the case. He himself has been accused of cheating the government.

Gavande had tried to purchase the land belonging to an agriculture university situated at a prime location in Pune by forging documents. The university administration brought this to my notice during my visit to their campus last year as agriculture minister. I had asked the principal to file an FIR against Gavande for forgery.

Gavande is levelling these allegations against me because I foiled his attempt to buy the Rs 400 crore property in an unholy nexus with Pune’s city engineer Prashant Waghmare. They conspired against me.

I had exposed Waghmare in a corruption case when I was leader of Opposition in the Vidhan Sabha. He was suspended, but later reinstated.

The original owner of the Bhosari land, Abbas Ukani, had contacted nearly 500 people to sell the plot. Ukani is 90 years old. He shifted to Kolkata, fed up of the issues related to this land. As I am also in-charge of the minority affairs department, he came to me through his friends.

I spoke to five to six people, asking if they were interested in purchasing the land. No one came forward. So Ukani requested me to buy the plot. I told him I couldn't as I was a minister. So he urged my wife and son-in-law to buy it, and they have every right to buy a property in a legal way.

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The MIDC had not paid Ukani the requisite compensation. He had approached the high court demanding better compensation. The case has been pending for more than two decades. Since then, there is a dispute over the land. No one was willing to invest in it. Meanwhile, some industries were set up on the plot through unauthorised means - it is nothing but encroachment.

Ukani told me he could not fight any more as he was getting older.

I checked the documents pertaining to the land. There was no legal hassle. I had consulted two senior bureaucrats - Bhushan Gagrani and Vikas Kharge - who had handled the case on whether the land title was clear. They too told me that there was no legal problem in purchasing the plot of land.

The government had issued a notification to acquire the land in 1968, but it was never done. There is a provision in the law that the acquisition process is rendered null and void if no claimant takes possession in 40 years.

It has been 45 years now. Also, a government circular issued in 1995 states that the land acquisition process will be null and void if a dispute is not resolved within two years. So how is it a legal problem?

My opponents say that my family bought the plot to land a huge profit from the compensation they would get after the MIDC acquired the land under the new law acquisition law.

My son-in-law works in the field of information technology. He thought he could start his own business there. Anyone who had purchased the land would have been compensated for it, and no one knows when they will actually be paid for it.

Still, if anyone thinks they are at fault, they will return the land.

I reiterate, I will soon disclose who the main conspirator is in this case. I will not take anyone’s name. Only last week, my revenue department had taken into possession a 10-acre land registered under the name of Mukund Bhavan Trust in Pune.

The issue of my family’s land deal was raised after that. Do you even know about the Mukund Bhavan Trust case?

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[When he was leader of Opposition in 2011, Khadse had exposed the then chief minister Ashok Chavan and NCP president Sharad Pawar for helping Mukund Bhavan Trust in 1989 to illegally acquire the 326-acre land in Pune when it was entitled to get the possession of only 32.6 acre of land.

Khadse stands accused of conflict of interest and misuse of office in the purchase of a three-acre industrial land near Pune. Though the market price of the land is around Rs 40 crore, his family purchased it for Rs 3.74 crore.]

(As told to Kiran Tare)