In February 2021, the nephew of the mayor of Ayodhya, Rishikesh Upadhyaya of the Bharatiya Janata Party, bought a plot of land in the town for Rs 20 lakh. Three months later, as I reported with another journalist, the nephew sold the plot to the Ram temple trust for Rs 2.5 crore – 12 times the original price.
Soon, other reports surfaced of similar land transactions in which relatives of politicians and officials had made windfall gains by buying land cheaply and selling it to the temple trust at significantly higher prices, often within days.
The reports prompted the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh to set up a one-man committee headed by the state revenue secretary to investigate the transactions. The committee’s findings are yet to be made public.
But an examination of land records of one village in Ayodhya shows the pattern remains intact – politically-influential people and individuals associated with them continue to buy land cheaply and sell it to the temple trust at higher prices.
All that has changed – perhaps because of the increased scrutiny – is that the transactions have slowed down. Instead of days or months, the gap between the original purchase and the resale has widened to a few years.
The village, Bagh...
from Scroll.in https://scroll.in/article/1095120/ayodhya-land-deals-yield-rich-dividends-for-relatives-of-politicians?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=public https://sc0.blr1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/article/215114-qokkmienzb-1787052544.jpg
via
0 Comments