‘Defence land sold to builders’

Senior vice-president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Kirit Somaiya alleged that 200 acres of defence land in Pune was siphoned off to private builders due to the unholy nexus between the builders and politicians. He was speaking to the media in Pune on Thursday.

Referring to the recent raids conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) at the residences of two senior defence officials in Pune for alleged involvement in the illegal sale of 0.96 acres of defence land to Kalpataru builders, Somaiya said, “The minister of state for defence had issued a letter directing the sale of the land.”

On February 2, the anti-corruption bureau of the CBI raided houses of Vice-Chief (retd) Lt Gen Nobel Thamburaj and SR Nayyar, defence estate officer (retd), Southern Command, Pune.

Somaiya said that across the country 10,000 acres of defence land have been illegally sold to builders. “In most cases, political pressure played a major role,” he said.

In Pune to take part in the ongoing campaign, Somaiya asked why tainted city MP, Suresh Kalmadi, had not come clean about the names of those involved in the Commonwealth Games scam.

He alleged that electronic voting machines used for the polls in Maharashtra can be easily rigged.