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A
court here Friday cancelled the allotment of state-owned farm land to
Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan in an Uttar Pradesh village by the
Mulayam Singh Yadav government, calling it "an act of forgery".
Faizabad
Additional Commissioner Vidya Sagar Prasad ruled that entry in the land
records declaring Bachchan as the owner of the particular plot of land
in Daulatpur village in Barabanki district, 35 km from Lucknow, was
"tampered and forged."
The court also ruled that Bachchan was "not a farmer" - as he had claimed.
The
star, a friend of former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, had
received 3 'bighas' (about 70,000 sq feet) of land in the village from
the government as largesse.
The allotment, purported to have
been made way back in 1983, was actually allegedly made by
interpolation in the land revenue records during the Mulayam regime.
Friday's order shows the allotment was backdated.
According to
government advocate Surendra Raje, who argued the case before the land
revenue court here, apparently this was done to enable Amitabh to
acquire the status of a 'farmer' without which a huge farmland he
bought in Pune could not be transferred in his name under the
Maharastra land laws.
Political circles here maintain that the
entire exercise was carried out to obviously circumvent Maharastra
rules that don't permit ownership of farmland by anyone other than a
farmer.
However, it was a query by Pune collector in March 2006
to the Barabanki district magistrate seeking authentication of the
Uttar Pradesh testimonial that opened the Pandora's box.
Then
Barabanki District Magistrate Ashish Goel cancelled the allotment in
March 2006 on the ground that the land revenue records had been forged.
Goel earned the wrath of both Mulayam Singh Yadav and his
confidant Amar Singh and was soon given the marching order. Ram Shankar
Sahu, who succeeded him, agreed to sign on the dotted line.
However,
since Goel's objections had become a part of the official records that
could not be destroyed, Sahu could not do much besides staying his
predecessor's order and that too only "till further orders".
Since
this did not end Bachchan's woes and worries about his 'farmer' status
in Maharastra, where he had already bought a plush farmhouse, so he
sought a review of the district magistrate's order by the commissioner,
hoping to get the land restored in his name.
But with
elections getting announced and major bureaucratic changes affected by
the Election Commission, Bachchan could not have his way.
And
now, with Mayawati in charge of Uttar Pradesh, the new additional
commissioner found everything wrong with Amitabh's allotment.
"That
the intention of the superstar was questionable became evident from the
manner in which the superstar sought to conceal his real identity by
showing his name as just 'Amitabh' and dropping 'Bachchan' even from
his father Harivansh Rai's name," alleged local lawyer L.R. Rathore.
In a recent interview to a TV channel, Amitabh had said he was ready to face a probe into the matter.
"I
am a law-abiding citizen and will obey whatever the law asks me to do.
If proved wrong, we are ready to face penalty. If everything is found
to be in order, I would say thank you," he had told the channel.
Indo-Asian News Service
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