After CAG dust settles, it will be business as usual

The CAG report always generates some sound and fury but mostly, it signifies nothing. This year, the sound and fury has been louder but it’s a good bet that it will still signify nothing. The report ends up with the public accounts committee, which will labour over the explanations given by sundry departments and soon, all will be forgiven.

Perhaps that’s why the CAG was determined to have a longer day in the sun this time. It has looked at deals dating back a decade or two to pick holes in them. In some cases, it appears to have made mistakes, as in the apparent confusion between Rule 27 and Rule 28 of the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code in its assessment of land allotments.

While Rule 27, which applies to cooperative housing societies, bars a member from owning a flat anywhere in the same city, Rule 28 applies to four categories of individuals who are barred from owning a flat anywhere in the state. For reasons not explained, the auditor has applied Rule 28 to some instances like the Ashirwad society in Andheri instead of Rule 27. Even more curiously, this fact was brought to its notice in the government reply to the CAG draft but it has been ignored in the final report.

Be that as it may, it is high time we revisited the land allotment policy. Land allotments have been mired in controversy ever since they became legit after the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code was implemented in 1971. The idea was to allot land at concessional rates for social causes and to needy sections that eventually ended up including private trusts run by politicians and professionals like public servants, judges and journalists.

According to revenue department estimates, around 600 cooperative housing societies have been given such plots since 1990.

If south Mumbai was the coveted location in the 1970s and 1980s, the suburbs came in for serious reckoning from the 1990s. At 20% of the market value, a plot of land anywhere was worth grabbing. The only hitch was that beneficiaries were not permitted to sell the plot of land or flat acquired under this policy. The 1999 Government Resolution, which lays down conditions of leasing, changed all that. Soon, unscrupulous officers and politicians were buying flats in one housing society and selling it to buy another.

So, highlighting the lacunae in individual instances, as the CAG has done, was necessary but the larger problem is in the policy and its implementation. The CAG has made this point, though not in a focussed way. The government routinely glosses over the norms of allotment to favour the influential, and it does not care to follow even the letter of the law. Government directives of February 22, 1996, require the collector to maintain a land distribution register listing details of every allotment, but such a database is not maintained by the collectorate or the government.

Neither is there any follow-up of the allotments to ensure lease conditions are not breached. If we are to put in place a credible policy that benefits deserving sections of society, it is imperative to have a transparent policy with built-in public scrutiny and a mechanism to keep vigil on the use of such land.

The biggest problem here is not vested interests but apathy. The brouhaha over the CAG report will die down in no time. Then, it’ll be back to business. Till the next time the auditor bares its fangs.