Outrage over Devyani’s Adarsh scam involvement in line?

Maharashtra government is seemingly trying its very best to avoid tabling the Adarsh Commission Report in the legislative assembly and thus making it public. Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan too has refused to allow the CBI the mandatory go-ahead for prosecution of former chief minister Ashok Chavan despite having strong evidence against him.

Addition to this fact is the involvement of Indian consulate to New York Devani Khobragade in the scam. While there is serious outrage over her arrest in the alleged visa fraud and the case is quite disputed, the Adarsh scam has taken a back seat but her involvement in the scam is undisputable.

Adarsh scam was unearthed in 2010. Adarsh society was built as a co-operative housing society allegedly on defence land and supposedly for Kargil war widows and defence personnel. But it was found to have flats owned by politicians and their relatives as well as relatives of bureaucrats.

Devyani owns a flat in the infamous Adarsh. Her father Uttam Khobragade was one of the bureaucrats who allegedly engineered Adarsh scam.

It was during his tenure as general manager of BEST, the civic-owned bus and electricity utility in Mumbai, that the Adarsh Society got additional building rights from an adjacent BEST bus depot. This allowed the society promoters to increase the original plan of six floors to a massive 31 floors.

That’s not all when it comes to Devyani’s real estate holdings in Mumbai. When she got the Adarsh flat, she already owned a flat in another government housing society in Oshiwara, which too was allotted under the state government’s 10 per cent quota where recipients get flats at extremely cheap rates.

While the guidelines suggest that no one can get flats in two housing societies which get land on concessional rates and they have to give an affidavit to this effect, Devyani bought two houses overlooking the guidelines. However, when Uttam Khobragade was asked about this violation and material non-disclosure of facts on the part of Devyani by the Adarsh Commission, he said that it was not his duty to inform the Adarsh Co-operative society that Devyani had also been allotted a flat in Oshiwara under the 10 percent quota.

Now it should be a matter of inquiry to check whether Devyani submitted a fraudulent affidavit at Adarsh to get the Adarsh flat.

While people are showing outrage over her arrest in the US, there is no serious word on her involvement in a scam. Is it because the Adarsh controversy includes not just her but many powerful politicians and bureaucrats? If so, it should definitely be the controversy the common Indian should be more interested in getting to the bottom of.