PUNE, 16 July 2007 — Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national Vice President Gopinath Munde said here yesterday that the BJP would rake up the issue of irregularities in the Waqf properties as well as the farmers’ suicide and floods in the monsoon session of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly which is to begin today. Munde called a short-notice press conference to protect against the irregularities in the Waqf board land deals. “The BJP demands a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe not only in Waqf land deals but all major land deals in Pune and within a 15-km radius,” he said.
He was asked to comment on the controversy relating to the Lavasa project, a township being built by a private consortium led by Hindustan Construction Company on a 3,600-plus hectares of land in the picturesque backwaters of the Varasgaon dam, 60-km from Pune. In this project, it is alleged that state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and federal Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar have stakes.
Munde said that the CBI should probe the project and pointed out that several fake land deals had taken place in Pune during the last few years. “Who funds these projects? How are such huge funds raised? Who are the real owners of these properties? All these questions warrant a CBI probe and I will press for it during the assembly session,” Munde said.
Chief Minister Deshmukh would have to face some questions on the Waqf land sale, while Minister for Waqf Anees Ahmed is likely to face action for his statements against the chief minister. Ahmed had accused Dilip Deshmukh — brother of the chief minister — of being involved in a land deal in which a Waqf Board property in Aurangabad was sold for peanuts. Ahmed had sought a CID probe into the deal, though the chief minister had subsequently clarified that the land in question was not a Waqf property.
Although the Waqf board owns over 97,000 acres of land and 24,000 institutions, it is virtually in a state of penury, so much so that it doesn’t even have funds to pay salaries of its 55 employees. Ifteqarullah Baig, president of Marathwada Waqf Board said, “Our Contributory Provident Fund has not been deposited in the banks for the last five years.”
Former Indian Express
Editor Passes Away
Senior journalist and former resident editor of Indian Express-Pune, Prakash Kardaley, 66, passed away yesterday following a massive heart attack at his residence at Patrakar Nagar. He was rushed to Ratna Hospital where he was declared dead.
Kardaley was associated with the Indian Express newspaper for more than 40 years. He worked in Mumbai and Pune as reporter and retired in 2006 as its resident editor in Pune. The management then created a special post of senior editor (initiatives) in Pune edition and appointed him on contract basis, soon after his retirement.
Kardaley resigned in April 2007 to start his own English weekly “Intelligent Pune” in May.
Kardaley was deeply involved in the Right to Information Act. issues which he highlighted regularly in his Indian Express Initiative pages.
Speaking on the demise of Kardaley, Shailesh Gandhi an RTI activist from Mumbai, said “the loss of Kardaley is a big blow to the movement of RTI. The vacuum created by his death will be hard to fill for a long time.”
