Odisha Government to cancel 1791 land, plot and flats given under Discertionary quota

Utkal Reporter Bureau
Bhubaneswar|19 Dec 2014

Odisha Government will take back all the Land, Plots and flats allotted in the controversial Discretionary quota since 1995. State cabinet in a meeting under Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik’s chairmanship on Thursday has taken a decision in this regard.
Chief Secretary GC Pati said after the cabinet committee meeting that the allotment of plots made by the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), Cuttack Development Authority (CDA) and the Odisha State Housing Board (OSHB) under the scheme during the period would be cancelled.

The cabinet has also decided that Cases of multiple benefit avails under discretionary quota would be put under Vigilance probe.

Government has taken the step following the recommendations of Taradutt committee set in August this year to probe into the cases of land allotments under the discretionary quota during the period in question.

The three member Taradutt committee termed the process of selection of beneficiaries under the discretionary quota by the concerned Ministers and authorities during 1999 and 2004 as illegal.

According to Taradutt committee report, as revealed by the government there were 1791 beneficiaries under the discretionary quota. Of which 54 have taken multiple houses and there were 78 such cases those have availed the benefit before projects were launched.

For the last few years now a good number of scandals has come up to disturb the setup of the ruling Biju Janata Dal. The Land Scam being one of those. Traces of dubiousness have been exposed in the act of selecting beneficiaries of land, plot and flat in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in august this year has remarked irregularity being done by the authorities while exercising their bestowed discretionary power in selecting beneficiaries for allotting land, plot and flats under BDA and CDA.

The remark had fuelled the opposition to launch attack on the government. Ultimately the government was forced to set up a task force under additional chief secretary, Revenue Dr, Tara Dutt on Agust 2, 2014.And the cabinet on Thursday has acknowledged the recommendation and took step according to that with a hope that all apprehensions regarding the discretionary quota would go to rest.