Two days after he was elected as the Baharampur MP on a Trinamool Congress ticket, cricketer-turned-politician Yusuf Pathan received a notice from the Vadodara Municipal Corporation asking him to vacate encroachments on land owned by the civic body. And five days later, a local BJP leader wrote to the civic body making the same demand.
VMC standing committee chairman Sheetal Mistry told Newslaundry that Pathan, a resident of Gujarat’s Vadodara, has been asked to vacate the land within two weeks. It’s next to a plot owned by him in Vadodara’s Vasna Road area.
“I did not know that the VMC commissioner had issued a notice to Yusuf Pathan. I had complained about three different lands, including one owned by Pathan. I have no enmity with him. He used to live in my constituency earlier. We have even played cricket together,” said former BJP corporator Vijay Pawar, who wrote to the VMC commissioner Dilip Rana and standing committee on June 11 to get the plot vacated.
A failed bid to purchase that land
Rana had sent the notice on June 6, alleging encroachment on plot number 90, saying that another notice had been sent years ago.
When Pathan began construction on the plot, he also offered to buy the VMC plot – the price of which was fixed at Rs 57,200 per square metre – amounting to about Rs 5.5 crore. As per a VMC letter seen by Newslaundry, the land was to be leased to Yusuf Pathan for residential use for 99 years on March 27, 2012. However, on June 18, 2014, Gandhinagar’s Urban Development and Urban Housing Department’s deputy secretary, Ashok Singh Parmar, wrote to the VMC commissioner that the bid had been rejected as there was no auction.
In the meantime, Pathan had already built a horse stable on plot 90.
Link to polls?
An official associated with the municipal corporation said that the process of sending notices started after the Rajkot fire tragedy – 28 were killed in a blaze at a game zone on May 25.
VMC commissioner Dilip Kumar Rana’s personal assistant Amit Thorat asked Newslaundry to speak to Vikram Vasava, the officer handling the case. Vasava asked us to speak to another officer.
BJP leader Pawar denied that the notice was politically motivated.
Newslaundry tried to reach out to Pathan and also sent him a questionnaire. This report will be updated If we receive a response.
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