Rajasthan government forms committee to probe single lease cases
Jaipur : The state government of Rajasthan has constituted a committee for impartial investigation of cases related to single leases in Rajasthan. On the instructions of Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma, this committee has been constituted under the chairmanship of former judge R.S. Rathore. The Additional Chief Secretary of the Home Department and the Principal Secretary of the Urban Development and Housing Department will be members of this committee.
It is noteworthy that during the tenure of the previous government, a committee was constituted to withdraw the case from the court on the irregularities in the single lease case. However, officials related to the office of the then-UDH Minister were included in the committee. This raised questions on the impartiality of the said committee.
Bhajanlal government had given a clean chit to Congress MLA Shanti Dhariwal and three other officials in the much talked about single lease case recently. In the reply presented by the government in the Supreme Court, it has been told that there is no case in the single lease case of ten years ago. The rules were fully followed in the single lease case due to which the government has not suffered any financial loss.
The whole matter pertains to June 29 2011 when Jaipur Development Authority issued a single lease in the name of Shailendra Garg, who was the proprietor of Ganapati Construction. Complainant Ramsharan Singh complained about this to the Corruption ACB in 2013. On the basis of the complaint, Ganapati Construction proprietor Shailendra Garg, then ACS GS Sandhu, Deputy Secretary Nishkam Diwakar, Zone Deputy Commissioner Omkarmal Saini and two other accused were arrested. A challan was presented against them in the ACB court. As the dispute escalated, JDA cancelled the single lease on May 25 2013.
In this case, a case was registered by the ACB on December 3, 2014, during the time of the then Vasundhara government. The then UDH Minister, Shanti Dhariwal, was also questioned. But as soon as the Gehlot government came to power in Rajasthan in 2018, the ACB presented three closure reports in court and gave a clean chit to former IAS GS Sandhu, former RAS Nishkam Diwakar, and Onkarmal Saini. The third closure report was presented in the court by the ACB on July 19, 2022. In this too, the ACB, not considering any irregularity in the single lease case, had applied to the court to withdraw the charge sheet filed against these accused, but the court rejected it.
In this case, an SLP was filed in the Supreme Court by RTI activist Ashok Pathak against the order of the High Court. Considering it a case of corruption, it was argued that it cannot be closed only on the basis of the consent of the complainant. the Rajasthan government submitted its reply on April 22 in the SLP filed in the Supreme Court, which said that there was no case in the single lease case but post-polls, a new committee has been formed to investigate this matter.
