The opposition Congress, Samata Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal have joined hands to escalate the land scam issue by deciding to file a corruption case against Nitish Kumar and others in view of the ruling of the court.
"We have decided to file a corruption case against Nitish Kumar, minister of concern departments and officials who helped to allot land to Jha under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988," Congress spokesperson Prem Chand Mishra, state president of Samata Party P K Sahi and Rashtriya Janata Dal general secretary Shyam Rajak announced at a joint press conference in Patna on Thursday.
They also demanded the resignation of Nitish Kumar in view of court strictures against his government in allotment of lands to Jha. "The chief minister should resign immediately because his tall claims of rule of law and good governance were exposed by the court order," opposition leaders said.
They said that the court stricture against state government in its order to quash allotment of lands to Jha made it a clear corruption case against Nitish Kumar, ministers of concern department and officials. "It is a clear cut case of corruption against chief minister, ministers and officials under Section 13 D of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988" they said.
The court in its ruling stated that all restraints seems to have been thrown to the winds and the matter proceeded with utmost speed and in complete disregard of the legal requirements. "Though there is no lease deed on the record, the request for permission for mortage was creating sub-lease of the land seems to have started coming" court also said, "On going through the records, I am convinced that allotment of lands to respondent was made in a thoroughly irregular way and the allotments are completely untenable."
Opposition leaders have sought copies of all the relavent documents related to allotment of lands to Jha under the RTI Act within a month." Before filing a case of corruption against them, we would like to identified the main guilty for allotment of lands to Jha," they said.
In December the court order came on a public suit filed by Premchand Mishra alleging that the land was allotted to Jha by the state government in violation of rules. Mishra alleged that all norms had been violated to favour Jha by selling the land to him at throwaway prices.
Mishra said that a total of 11 acres of lands allotted to Jha at six places including in Patna, Hajipur, Sitamarhi and Muzaffarpur. He said that the state government had completed the formalities for allotting 14 acres of land to another company of Jha -- P and M Infrastructure -- at eight places in the state.
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