Court to Re-examine Clean Chit to Rosaiah in Land Scam

Former chief minister K Rosaiah's controversial decision to denotify the prime land came under the scanner again following a complaint. The court issued summons to Principal secretary BP Acharya and two other officials to appear as witnesses in the case pertaining to denotification of 9.14 acres of prime land at Ameerpet in the city.

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) court issued summons to Acharya, who is already embroiled in the Emaar-MGF scam, directing him to appear before it on January 23 to record his statement. Besides Acharya, two other officials -- principal secretary (Industries and Commerce) T Sanyasi Rao and Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) senior official Narayana Reddy, who were also part of the denotification process, were also issued summons. T Sanyasi Rao became a witness since he was the then principal secretary (MA&UD) department, who issued GO 288 denotifying the HMDA land.

Acharya, during his stint as HMDA commissioner, had written letters to the MA&UD department not to denotify the 9.14 acre land located in survey numbers 26, 30, 41, 44 at Ameerpet, which was acquired by HMDA (Huda) several decades ago. In one of his letters, Acharya said, "Section 48 of the Land Acquisition Act can be invoked only in cases where possession of the acquired land is not taken. In the present case, the possession of the acquired land was taken in two spells (May 10, 2004 and December 14, 2009)". However, Rosaiah, who was the then chief minister, overlooked Acharya's remarks and altered the facts. The ACB officials registered a case against Rosaiah under sections 406, 409, 420 and 120 B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) besides 11,12, 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act based on the directions of the ACB court following a complaint lodged by Mohan Lal.

However, the court decided to examine the witnesses and verify the evidence gathered by Mohan Lal since the petitioner alleged that ACB failed to do a proper investigation and gave a clean chit to Rosaiah.