AAP sees red in Belagavi Urban Development Authority site auction

BELAGAVI: Rajkumar Topannavar, a leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), on Friday filed a complaint with the Lokayukta against the Belagavi Urban Development Authority (Buda) for conducting a manual auction of sites illegally that allegedly caused revenue loss to the tune of Rs 100 crore to the government.
In a press conference, Topannavar said the manual auction carried out on March 18 this year is one of the biggest scams in the history of the Belagavi city.
He demanded the government to cancel the allotted sites and take action against the culprits.
He also urged that the government should recover the losses from the Buda commissioner.
Topannavar said Buda conducted manual auction of around 60 sites, just two days after e-auctioning of some sites. There are several government circulars prohibiting manual auction which has a scope for malpractice creeping in.
He alleged that in the manual auction, Buda purposely auctioned all prime and corner sites and at a lesser price compared to the e-auction. Manual auction rates were fixed at Rs 1,400 sqft while Rs 1,800 sqft was for the e-auction.
He alleged that the manual auction was conducted in a suspicious manner.
He also raised questions over how the adjacent sites were allotted to the same persons.