The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has accused the ruling party leaders of alleged involvement in a huge scam in the issue of Transferable Development Rights (TDR) bonds by the Municipal Corporation of Tirupati (MCT) in the garb of developing eighteen master plan roads.
Addressing a media conference here on February 20, the party’s State spokesperson Anam Venkataramana Reddy alleged that the MCT had issued TDR bonds with inflated values by projecting residential localities and agricultural lands as ‘commercial’, besides issuing bonds to fake GPA holders. In the same vein, he charged the bureaucracy of remaining a mute spectator in the entire issue.
This is for the second time that Mr. Reddy has flagged large-scale corruption on the issue in less than three months. This time, he specifically mentioned the names of beneficiaries who had been issued bonds worth in crores for the lands worth a few lakhs of rupees.
“Bonds worth ₹.61 crore were issued in favour of a person who is not the actual owner of the land acquired. Don’t the officials have accountability over public money?”, he quizzed, demanding that Revenue Recovery Act be applied on all the officials involved in the scam to get the money back into the exchequer.
Mr. Reddy also produced documents showing the then Joint Collector of Tirupati district raising objection over the ‘flawed’ issue of TDR bond to an illegitimate beneficiary. Pointing to another case of ‘over-valuation’, he produced Sub-Registrar’s valuation copy of a site, the value of which saw a phenomenal rise by four times in around sixteen months.
“In case of the 373 bonds issued for developing 18 master plan roads, the corporation acquired land at a whopping rate of ₹60 crore per acre. Where on earth is such a rate prevailing, that too on the outskirts of Tirupati?”, he wondered.
Flaying the district administration for becoming a ‘puppet’ in the hands of the ruling party and thus remaining a mute spectator in spite of the opposition producing evidence, Mr. Reddy said that the TDP, upon coming to power, would expose those involved in the scam and bring them to book.
