TN RAGHUNATHA | Mumbai
A file pertaining to the controversial Adarsh housing society has disappeared this time round from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) in New Delhi.
Confirming the development, a senior CBI official told The Pioneer on Saturday: "The disappearance of a file pertaining to the Adarsh housing society came to our notice, when our team visited the MoEF last week. The missing file contained correspondence between the Maharashtra Urban Development (UD) department and MoEF between 2002 and 2003 and some internal memos / write-ups of MoEF on issues pertaining to the Adarsh housing society".
"We wanted the file in connection with the ongoing investigations into the Adarsh scam. The MoEF officials were not sure as to how the file had gone missing. It is unlikely that they will lodge a complaint with the police in this connection. However, the MoEF officials assured us that they will re-construct the missing file and send it across to us," the CBI official said.
According to the official, the missing correspondence comprised letters written by the MoEF to the State UD department about the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms and the need for the Adarsh society approaching the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) for seeking the CRZ clearance.
Khambatta, appearing on behalf of the MoEF, had told the High Court that PV Deshmukh, then deputy secretary of the State UD department, had "misinterpreted" the letter written by the Ministry and issued a letter to the Adarsh society, claiming that the MoEF had given a CRZ clearance to the Adarsh building, while the fact remained that the Ministry had said that the society had to approach the MCZMA for such a clearance.
The revelation about the disappearance of the Adarsh society-related correspondence from the MoEF comes nine days after the CBI arrested three State UD department officials — a desk officer Gurudutt Vajpe, Assistant Town Planner NN Narvekar, and a clerk Waman Raul — in connection with the reported disappearance of some crucial Adarsh scam-related official documents from the department's files nearly six months ago.
A month after the UD department found pages 15, 27, 99 and 279 missing from a particular Adarsh society-related file kept in the department's record room, a desk officer Gurudutt Vajpe from the department had lodged a complaint with the Marine Drive police station on November 26 last year.
The file containing the missing documents — said to be some correspondence carrying official notings vis-a-vis CRZ clearance and the issue relating to the reduction of the width of a road adjacent to the land on which Adarsh society came to be constructed — had reportedly gone missing from the files of the State UD department on October 28, 2010.
The correspondence related to papers originating from the State UD department between 1999 and 2003. Ramanand Tiwari, the then UDD principal secretary, is believed to have made the notings in these missing documents.
Tiwari, who is one of the 13 accused in the Adarsh scam is alleged to have had a hand in the disappearance of the four crucial Adarsh-related documents. Incidentally, Raul — arrested in connection with the missing State UDD documents case — was then clerk to Tiwari.
Tiwari, whose son Omkar was allotted a flat in the Adarsh building at Colaba in south Mumbai after he in his capacity as the then State Urban Secretary allegedly doled out favours to the controversial housing society, has, among other things, been accused of facilitating the transfer of FSI from the neighbouring BEST land to Adarsh which helped the controversial housing society build to the height of 103.60 metres.
The arrests came more than 12 weeks after the Bombay High Court transferred the case Mumbai Crime branch to the CBI on February 17. Significantly enough, while transferring the case to the CBI, the high court had observed: "There is a direct link between the (missing) documents pertaining to deletion of reservation for a road and CRZ clearance for Adarsh and the scam".
Before the CBI took over the investigations into the missing documents case, the Mumbai crime branch sleuths had in all questioned 66 persons and recorded 40-odd statements in connection with the missing documents.
Admitting that a 'new file' opened for controversial Adarsh Housing Society in Mumbai was missing, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh sought to downplay the incident, saying it was not a 'permanent' file and was liable to be 'weeded out'. He claimed that 'too much' should not be read into the development and that his Ministry had 'reconstructed' the correspondence with the Maharashtra Government that was supposed to be contained in the file.
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