Comments
Shares of India’s largest real estate developer DLF fell for the third straight day following allegations of corruption by activist Arvind Kejriwal.
Late on Tuesday, DLF had rejected the charges made by Kejriwal, saying that it had not indulged in illegal land deals with Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra,
Shares in other two realty firms named by Kejriwal, BPTP and IndiaBulls, also tanked. IndiaBulls Real Estate shares closed 9.25 per cent lower. BPTP is an unlisted realty firm.
DLF had clarified that it had not received any special favours from the Haryana Government.
“With reference to the 30 acres of SEZ development by DLF on land purchased from East India Hotels, the order of the High Court of Punjab & Haryana has been stayed by the Supreme Court vide its orders dated 20th June 2011 and 26th September 2011.The matter is sub judice and is awaiting hearing”.
On Robert Vadra being a majority shareholder in DLF SEZ Holdings, the company said, “In the DLF SEZ Holdings, 50 per cent of shareholding was acquired by North India IT Parks Pvt. Ltd. in October 2008 at the face value of Rs 2.50 lakh. The said 50 per cent shareholding was subsequently bought back from North India IT Parks in September 2009 fully at face value of Rs 2.50 lakh, as the proposal for developing SEZs could not take off due to deep recession in the market in year 2009. No benefit or gain was made by Vadra or DLF, in this regard.”
Kejriwal accused the Haryana Government of manipulating the bidding process, and said that 350-acre land worth Rs 17,000 crore was given to DLF.
To this, DLF said that, “We had confirmed that this land was allotted through an international bidding tender. This matter is sub judice before the High Court of Punjab & Haryana. We stand by our statement.”
IAC’s reaction
On Wednesday, reacting to the Haryana Government’s statement on DLF issue, India Against Corruption said that, “The Haryana Government has accepted that when the Government had acquired land for residential purpose, East India Hotels Ltd was given 30-acre land for building a hospital in 1995. It has also accepted that the company did not build the hospital till 2005. This raises a suspicion on Haryana Government as even though the company did not build the hospital for such a long period neither was any action taken against the company nor was the land taken back by the Government.”
“On the other hand East India Hotels sold the land to DLF Ltd and the Government permitted this transaction even when there was a clear change in use of land (used for developing SEZ and not hospital) The question that arises is why did Haryana Government allow the sale of land which is being used for development of SEZ when it was supposed to have been used for construction of a hospital?
“Also that later Robert Vadra had a 50 per cent share in DLF SEZ Holdings raises suspicion on the motive behind this sale of this piece of land,” IAC said.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.