The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), which has been in the news over allegations of land fraud and corruption, plans to digitise processes and upgrade its IT infrastructure to bring in more transparency. The authority will spend ₹15 crore for digitisation and upgradation with the aim of clamping down on fraudulent practices by middlemen, and by its own staff.
With the new system, documents will be validated at every stage of an e-auction. This will bring in more transparency and accountability among officials from across departments. The BDA will soon float tenders for this.
Many staff of the BDA are under investigation for rigging the e-auction of corner sites. They allegedly colluded with temporary staff and middlemen, created fake documents and registered BDA sites.
Recently, the development authority had filed cases with Sheshadripuram police after finding out that ownership of six corner sites worth crores had been illegally transferred for monetary gain. Fake ownership documents were prepared without transferring paying money to the BDA’s account. A few days ago, police had arrested six people in connection with the case that included a permanent staff of the BDA.
“We had lodged complaints with the jurisdictional police on irregularities that happened e-auctioning of corner sites. We have also decided to file a civil suit to cancel the registration of six sites. These irregularities took place in one batch of e-auctions last year,” said a BDA official, adding that digitisation will help put an end to such practices.
The official said that people involved in these cases fudged documents starting from issuing notifications for e-auctioning of the sites to issuing bogus challans . “All the documents submitted appeared to be genuine but they were not. Based on the probe conducted by the BDA’s vigilance team, the police filed FIRs,” the official added.
BDA Chairman S.R. Vishwanath told The Hindu people who were involved in creating forged documents had managed to immediately sell two properties within a few days of registering them. “Without taking part in the auction, these people have managed to register properties by creating all fake documents. People who purchased the sites later were not aware of this,” he said.
Mr. Vishwanath added that contract workers such as data entry operators working in the BDA for years are also involved. “There are people who have been working in the BDA for over ten years. We are contemplating terminating their contracts.” he said.