NEW DELHI: The manner in which the Planning Department approved of 80 plots for allotment to cooperative group housing societies when actually only about 20 were available has raised doubts as to why the Vice-Chairman of DDA was deliberately misled on the issue by the Department during a meeting in August 2003. Also, by sending an offer letter to the societies when no land was available, did DDA contribute to the cheating of a large number of people?

It has been reliably learnt that following this meeting, the Vice-Chairman of DDA had forwarded to the Registrar of Cooperative Societies a list of 46 societies and added 34 more on his own for allotment of land and asked the RCS to confirm the "genuineness of the societies mentioned''.

Then in September 2003, the RCS had written to the Vice-Chairman that all these societies were functional except five that were subsequently in October made functional after necessary procedures. To this list of 80 another 26 societies were added of which six were not found "eligible'' as they were either "junior'' or had been allotted land.

As more societies were added for allotment of land, a lot of activity took place vis-à-vis the sale and purchase of their membership. It was said in the offer letter that land for these societies would be made available in Dhirpur, Dwarka, Rohini and Narela. But a few days after the issue of the offer letter, DDA came out with a press release in June 2004 stating that it had no "developed plots'' and the allotment may not be made for the next one and a half years.

This led to a quantum jump in the property rates in all these areas. But many officials in DDA still wonder as to what prompted DDA to not only tell the Vice-Chairman about the availability of plots but also to issue offer letters when there was no land to meet the demand of the societies.

Meanwhile, it has also been learnt that the similarity in the fonts used on the letterheads of two different cooperative group housing societies -- Shastri Vihar and Ankur -- was what alerted the Delhi Development Authority about the presence of irregularities in the allotment and made it refer the matter back to the Registrar Cooperative Societies for verification, which ultimately saved it the blues in the scam.

Also, DDA was alerted about the goings on by the petition filed in the case which complained of Taj and Sartaj CGHS figuring in the list of 35 societies when land had already been allotted to them at Gita Colony in East Delhi.

It was then that DDA also realised through a scrutiny of its records that while another society, Raageshwari, had been offered land in March 1995 and its allotment had been cancelled for non-payment, AMP CGHS which had been offered land in the past had now come back to seek allotment by giving the list of its members under the new name of Venkateswara CGHS.

DDA officials say the manner in which the discrepancies came to light made them conduct internal investigations despite the matter being sub-judice and it was due to this effort that before the court observation on November 22, 2004, DDA had -- with the approval of the Lieutenant Governor -- on September 15, 2004 decided to return the list of all the 135 societies to the RCS for closer scrutiny of all the members.

And going by the record which shows that only about 180 of the around 17,000 members from all the societies had submitted their PAN numbers or affidavits initially, and later the number touched around a thousand, the Authority believes it took a right decision as the societies had been largely hijacked by property dealers.

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