Vizag Land Scam: SIT finds violations, to submit report in ten days

The Andhra Pradesh state government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe into the alleged land scam in Vizag. The SIT consisting of three members – former bureaucrats Vijay Kumar, Anuradha and former judge T. Bhaskar Rao would be submitting an interim report to the government, within 10 days.

Chairman of the SIT – K. Vijay Kumar said that while the interim report will be submitted within ten days, the final report will take some more time to complete. Kumar confirmed that the SIT has observed violations pertaining to the land scam. Bureaucrats, officers, and staff members from lower cadre and the higher cadres were found to be linked to the scam. DR (Darkhast Register) files too, were found to be missing in many suspicious cases. The Chairman said it is a challenging task to assimilate data in various cases.

So far, the SIT has received 2,434 petitions of which only 1,563 were considered worthy of an investigation. The official said that the petitions have been classified into three categories:

1. Change of classification
2. NOC lands
3. Government land allotted to private individuals and institutions

In the Change of classification category, the SIT received 263 petitions and 257 were referred to the tehsildars concerned for the report.

For government allotted lands, the SIT received reports on 112 cases, of which 61 have been rejected and in 19 cases the government has been asked for deletion from 22A classification.

In the NOC cases, about 100 cases out of which 68 cases were from the previous SIT and 43 were present cases. 30 of them were examined by the team. In the third category, 31 cases were probed, said the officials looking into the Vizag land scam.