A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed in the AP High Court, seeking a direction to the CBI, ED, Income Tax, Revenue and State Police to register FIRs against Jagan and others who have assets beyond their means to conduct an impartial investigation. The white papers released by the coalition government have been attached to the PIL.
The GAD Chief Secretary and the Union Home and Economic Affairs Secretaries have been named as respondents. When the PIL came up for hearing on Wednesday, party in-person Mehek Maheshwari responded online. She said she would personally appear before the High Court in the current PIL and present her arguments and requested that the hearing be adjourned to next week.
Agreeing to this, a bench comprising Chief Justice Dheeraj Singh Thakur and Justice Chimalapati Ravi adjourned the hearing to next Wednesday. After the coalition government came to power, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu released white papers in the Legislative Assembly on the corruption that took place during the previous government’s tenure.
It stated that the previous government had looted minerals, mines, land and forests and caused a loss of Rs. lakh crore to the government exchequer. “In Visakhapatnam, Rs. 4,469 crore was lost to the exchequer through land encroachment. In Ongole, a land scam of Rs. 101 crore was committed due to family disputes, vacant plots and creation of fake pattas for government lands”.
“The treasury suffered a loss of Rs. 270 crores by registering lands in the Prohibited List (22A) in Tirupati. In Chittoor district, Rs. 99 crores were incurred by allocating pattas to private individuals on non-agricultural lands in violation of the Estate Abolition Act, Rs. 3,000 crores were incurred by allocating houses on assigned lands, and Rs. 300 crores were incurred by allocating lands to YSRCP offices”, the petition stated, citing the details mentioned in the white paper.