Guava tree compensation scam: Now, VB arrests former PCS officer
Retired PCS officer Jagdish Singh Johal was previously land acquisition collector with the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority
The Punjab Vigilance Bureau on Thursday arrested retired PCS officer Jagdish Singh Johal, who was previously land acquisition collector (LAC) with the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA), in connection with the multi-crore guava tree compensation scam.
Since May 2, this is the 20th arrest in the scam wherein compensation worth crores was wrongfully claimed in lieu of land acquired by GMADA at Mohali’s Bakarpur village.
A VB spokesperson said Johal was instrumental in approving disbursal of wrongful payments to the accused beneficiaries on the basis of tailor-made assessment reports containing names and shares of said beneficiaries in contravention of revenue records.
Pertinently, two retired patwaris, Surinderpal Singh and Surinderpal, then posted at the LAC branch of GMADA, were also arrested last week.
Vigilance said during interrogation, they disclosed that initially they refused to certify the payment forms as names of owners and shares mentioned in the horticulture department’s assessment report were different from actual owners and shares in the revenue records. They alleged that Johal exercised his influence and pressurised them to initiate noting for approval of disbursement of payments in accordance with the horticulture department report by ignoring revenue records.
Further as the LAC, the accused PCS officer approved the payments and subsequently released around ₹124 crore to various beneficiaries, giving undue benefits to them while causing heavy losses to the exchequer.
To ensure payments to genuine beneficiaries, the GMADA chief administrator had even ordered that LAC will personally inspect guava orchards, check girdawari records to ascertain age of trees, besides conducting GIS drone mapping survey and videography of the area.
However, Johal deliberately ignored all these checks and released payments in connivance with the accused beneficiaries, the spokesperson added.
A pro forma, which was devised by the GMADA chief administrator on June 1, 2021, on the basis of which the first payments of compensation were started, was totally ignored.
VB stated that the accused PCS officer also released compensation to Nisha Garg, Shubham Wadhawan, Binder Singh, Neelam Bansal, Kiran Bansal, Bimla Mittal, Chestha, Santosh Kumari, Chanchal Kumar, Anil Kumar Batra, Susheel Kumari Batra and Rashmi Arora, who were not even recorded as land owners in the revenue record.
He released compensation to the non-eligible land owners, whereas their land pooling cases were proposed to be forwarded to court, being unauthorised purchases.
The spokesperson further informed that after surfacing of incriminating oral, circumstantial and documentary evidence against Johal, VB nominated him as an accused and arrested him from Mohali on Thursday.
