Chandigarh: Chandigarh Administrator S F Rodrigues on Friday came under a scathing attack from Union Minister P K Bansal who alleged that he was "resorting to mud-slinging" as at the end of his term he stood "discredited" on certain policies like land allotment for mega projects.
Bansal demanded a "detailed inquiry" into the land allotment policy of the Administrator and said he was not averse to his role also being probed into.
Rodrigues, the Governor of Punjab who is in the eye of a storm over alleged irregularities in big projects here, was locked in a slanging match with Union ministers Bansal and Ambika Soni on the land scam issue.
Rejecting what he described as "false allegations" reportedly levelled by the Governor against him on the issue, Bansal told reporters that "desperate to salvage his image, Rodrigues is now resorting to falsehoods."
Bansal said he had written letters to the Governor on acquisition of land at "abysmally low rates" and their sale to big corporate houses "for a song".
People of Chandigarh deserved to know why the Administrator reduced rates of land for allotting it to private land developers, he said. "The entire country was witnessing the hike in real estate prices, but the Administrator was applying some inverse mathematical formula."
"The Administrator chose to dispose of prime land to different companies at abysmally low rates," he alleged.
The public exchequer was on the verge of being put at a loss of Rs 2,000 crore by Rodrigues' action, Bansal charged.
After irregularities were revealed by the Union Home Ministry audit report and a Central Vigilance Commission ordered a CBI probe into two of Chandigarh mega projects, Rodrigues levelled allegations against both Bansal and Soni.
He had alleged in the interview to a national daily that "Bansal was offended when I pointed out serious irregularities in the land allotment to the DPS society which is headed by Ambika Soni's husband.
"It has Soni and Bansal as vice chairpersons and their family members as directors. This automatically put me in collision course with both Bansal and Soni. From then onwards, I was seen as a potential threat to their business interests," Rodrigues had alleged.
"In an effort to extricate himself out of the mess of his own making, he (Rodrigues) attributes the MHA audit report to me, calling it the result of his pointing out irregularities in allotment of land to the DPS, thus hurting my business interests. He is not speaking the truth," Bansal said.
Making an all-out attack on Rodrigues, Bansal said "I found him, very early into the Administrator's term, wholly intolerant and contemptuous of any suggestion given to him.
The Governor was "suffering from megalomania" and treated the city as a "personal fiefdom" by him, he charged.
Recently, Soni too had rubbished the charges by Rodrigues as "baseless and false."
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