HC seeks Adarsh flat payment details

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Monday demanded details on the mode of payment by all the 103 members of Adarsh CHS and orally upbraided the society for its "hesitation" to provide this information to the court.



The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)offered to cull out the details from its records and the HC directed it to do so in three weeks.
offered to cull out the details from its records and the HC directed it to do so in three weeks.
"We want to know how each member paid for their flats? How much was paid in cash, how much in and cheque and the financial years in which the payment was made. We can't understand why it is so difficult to give this information," said a bench of Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice R G Ketkar. The society represented by counsel Ashok Mundergi said the entire record of the members was submitted to the CBI and that the investigating agency could furnish details.
The judges repeatedly questioned the society about why it couldn't provide the information about its own members and wondered why the society was seeking to "complicate" a "simple query". "We don't want to comment on the society's statement. But we would think the society would have some information to give," the judges said. The judges' query was significant and in response to a petition by Pravin Wategaonkar for a probe under the Money Laundering (Prevention) Act. Wategaonkar said several prominent Adarsh members had not come clean about their source of funds. He cited the case of an ex-IAS officer Sriniwas Patil, a former collector in Pune, who paid Rs 60 lakh for his flat. Patil had informed the Income Tax department that he had borrowed Rs 13 lakh from a Hindu Undivided Family, but was silent on the source of the remaining Rs 47 lakh, Wategaonkar said in court.
Patil, incidentally, had taken voluntary retirement in 1999 when he contested the Lok Sabha polls and won on a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ticket from Karad defeating the present Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan. Justice Desai asked the society about this case but the society lawyer kept saying it had asked all its members to give their payment details to the CBI.
Wategaonkar had given details of about 15 members to the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The Income Tax department, which carried out an independent probe into the funding details of members in July, said it received information from 100 members and will complete its investigation by September 19.
On Monday, the judges said, "We expect the I-T department to stick to its deadline. We will take you to task if you don't," the judges warned. On the missing Adarsh files complaint, advocate Y P Singh argued that the CBI had failed to establish the motive, the investigating agency stated that it had recorded statements of 43 officials, including the principal secretary, and conducted a polygraph test on three employees of the urban development department and was awaiting its report. The HC stated sternly, "The recording of statements need not be restricted to only low ranking officials. We direct the CBI to record statements of all officers who dealt with the files since 1999." The CBI also submitted a status update report in a sealed cover to the court on the main criminal case.
Later, additional solicitor general Darius Khambata justifying the demolition order issued by the environment ministry said Adarsh was "clutching at straws" and making belated incorrect submissions to claim it could take additional FSI from an adjoining BEST plot.