Chavan was summoned to New Delhi by the party chief Sonia Gandhi where he offered to resign on Saturday. But the dust had hardly settled, senior Congress leader and state Revenue Minister Narayan Rane and senior Mumbai policemen were embroiled in a fresh housing and land grab scams.

On Saturday, Shri Kshetra Mahabaleshwar temple trust, in a petition filed in the Bombay High Court accused Nilima Rane, wife of the revenue minister, of illegally grabbing more than 20,000 sq. feet of land belonging to the trust. The trust told the court that Nilima got property records manipulated by a desk officer in the Revenue Department.

Lawyers for the trust Nitin Jamdar and Vijay Killedar told the court that the alteration in the land records done at the behest of the revenue minister shows there was mala fide intention behind the move.

The trust in its petition said that changes were made in the property records and that two acres of land were deleted from the list of the “gifted land” and more than 20,000 sq. feet from this land was shown as sold by Mahesh Panchal, a resident of Vasai town in Thane district, to Nilima. The Revenue Department immediately ratified the sale.

The high court asked the trust and the defendant, Nilima, not to carry out any development on the property. The court will now hear the case on Nov. 20.

Reacting to the allegations, Rane denied any wrongdoing by him or his family saying the land procurement process had been totally transparent and legal. He further said that the land was purchased for Rs 1.40 lakhs and the payment was made through a check. He said he was ready to part with the land if anyone wanted to buy it.

Another land scam involving Mumbai top cops also came to the fore. According to information, a prime land in the posh Juhu suburb of Mumbai given to Maharashtra-cadre top IPS officers for residential purposes was put to commercial use causing heavy losses to the government.

According to Right to Information activist Anand Joshi, the land was allotted to senior IPS officers in 2003, under an agreement that it would not be resold, be used only for residential purpose and that the IPS officers would not seek government accommodation during their tenure in Mumbai.

Joshi told the media that the IPS officers leased their houses for millions of rupees and when this issue was raised in the courts, rules were manipulated to suit the influential IPS officers.