ACB or SOG to probe fake land deed cases in Jodhpur: Min

Jodhpur: The state govt will conduct a probe into alleged fake land deeds issued by the Jodhpur Municipal Corporation (JMC) and the Jodhpur Development Authority (JDA) under the ‘Prashasan Shehron ke Sang' campaign during the previous Congress regime through Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) or Special Operations group (SOG).

This was stated by urban development minister Jhabar Singh Kharra during a meeting with officials of both the corporations and the JDA on his two-day visit to Jodhpur on Friday. During the meeting, legislators and the municipal commissioner suggested forming a high-level committee to investigate the issue of alleged fake land deeds.

Kharra instructed officials of both the civic bodies to prepare a list of such fake deeds and send it to the state govt. He asked them to provide details of any such deeds found in pending cases, along with the ones already reported.

So far, three to four land deeds have surfaced with alleged forged signatures of mayors from the North and South municipal corporations. However, municipal officials say that several more deeds were issued with forged signatures of mayors and investigation was ongoing. They admitted that files of many such deeds were missing, which too is under probe. The news of issuance of counterfeit deeds is not new phenomenon in civic bodies and the role of computer operators on contract basis and clerks has been proven a number of time, but in spite of the complaints against them, they continued working with impunity.

JDA commissioner Utsah Choudhary, while admitting their role, said that 12 such contract workers were removed last week. These workers even carried stamps, IDs and extracted OTPs, even changed directions of CCTV cameras to avoid being caught and were charging a handsome amount in return from applicants.

"Besides, we have received complaint against some clerks also. We have shuffled them as they had been working on some post for years," said Choudhary.

On bringing this to the notice of the minister, he directed the civic bodies to work out a mechanism where such contract workers were engaged only for a year and a fresh batch replaced them.

According to legislators, Devendra Joshi and Atul Bhansali, these contract workers have taken control of the entire system and work without any fear in issuing documents on their own using forged signatures.