Odisha vigilance arrests OAS officer, 4 RIs in Vasundhara land scam

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha vigilance on Monday blew the lid off a massive corruption in the allotment of land under the government’s Vasundhara scheme and arrested five revenue officials, including an Odisha Administrative Service (OAS) officer and four revenue inspectors (RIs), for their alleged involvement in the scam.
The accused had allegedly allotted homestead government plots to some ineligible beneficiaries in Kujanga area under the Vasundhara scheme during 2015 to 2018. Those arrested were identified by the vigilance sleuths as OAS officer Ramesh Chandra Panda, former tehsildar of Kujanga and currently serving as tehsildar in Tihidi, Santosh Kumar Mallick, former RI of Jhimani and present RI of Tirtol, Narendra Kumar Lenka, retired RI of Paradip Garh, Jyoti Bhusan Barik, former RI of Pandua and currently posted as RI of Ersama and Subash Chandra Das, retired RI of Kujanga.
Under the Vasundhara scheme, landless poor, whose annual income is below Rs 24,000, are eligible to get around four decimal of homestead land, free of premium, in the rural areas of the state. Prima facie, the vigilance found that the accused tehsildar and RIs prepared fake reports in favour of some ineligible beneficiaries in Kujanga area.
“The five revenue officials committed criminal misconduct, misappropriation, forgery and criminal conspiracy in illegally settling valuable government land under the Odisha Land settlement Act in favour of ineligible beneficiaries under the Vasundhara scheme in Jagatsinghpur district. The scam occurred when they were posted in Jagatsinghpur district between 2015 and 2018,” a senior vigilance officer said. Sources said a former sub-collector of Jagatsinghpur is also under the vigilance scanner for his alleged role in the scam.
Vigilance director Jeshwant Jethwa said the investigation is under way and the suspected involvement of some others is being ascertained. Simultaneous raids were conducted on the houses of the five accused in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Bhadrak and Jagatsinghpur by the multiple vigilance teams.
So far, the vigilance sleuths has detected irregularities in the allotment of the homestead land to nine ineligible beneficiaries. The number is likely to go up. While the Vasundhara beneficiaries are entitled to get land in rural areas, the accused persons had allotted the government-owned lands to the ineligible ones in prime localities in a semi-urban area near the Paradip port.
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