Sunday, June 14, 2009

Now, Lalu lands in trouble over railway project

Gopalganj (Bihar): Former railway minister Lalu Yadav is in yet another controversy. He has been charged with fraudulently allotting government land to his relatives when he was in the Union Cabinet.

The railway project that has landed him in trouble is the one connecting his native village Phulwaria to his wife Rabri Devi's native village Selarkala.

But now it has emerged that Lalu procured the land for the project from his relatives at phenomenally high price. That's not all as he allegedly got the land allotted to them illegally in the first place.

"It has come to light that the land acquired for the railway project was given to a few people illegally," said Gopalganj District Manager Kuldeep Narayan.

Controversies and Lalu Prasad have a long association. Lalu faced the fodder scam probe and the disproportionate asset's case while being in power in Bihar.

As a Union railway minister, Lalu s was charged with giving away railway jobs in lieu of land. The latest in the row is using the railways and fraudulently acquired land allotments to benefit his relatives in his native district.

Lalu's entire family was exposed when his elder brother Gulab Rai claimed that he had not been paid the full compensation amount due to him.

The district administration found that the land they are claiming as their own was actually government land, registered in their names using dubious means.

Lalu's brothers who own huge tracts of ancestral land in Gopalganj had declared that they were landless and got the government land.

"If during investigations it is revealed that land has been allotted illegally to any person then action will be taken against the concerned official and the person. Whatever legal procedures are to be followed will be done," said Narayan.

The family has now been served an eviction notice and they have also been ordered to return the entire compensation amount they got from railways.

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