Recently an attempt was made through so called ‘investigative’ journalism to attack Gujarat govt by establishing a non-existent ‘scam’ linking Smt. Anar Patel , daughter of Gujarat CM Smt. Anandiben Patel. The excitement to somehow pin responsibility on Gujarat Govt for this non-existent ‘scam’ was so much that the Journo conveniently forgot the basic tenets of Journalism while coming up with this gibberish. The way facts have been ignored clearly exposes the malafide intentions to target Modi Govt & derail the upcoming budget session of the Parliament on flimsy grounds. When you are out there with an agenda why allow facts to get in the way of your conspiracy theories. When you have nothing against Modi Govt simply manufacture a ‘scam ‘ in order to extract political mileage.
A study conducted by M/s Accenture for DIPP under UPA Govt had found that the Gujarat Government follows “best practices” for acquiring lands in India.
Since the time industrialization has picked up pace in Gujarat there has always been a coterie of NGO’s and vested interest groups who have tried their best to derail the development process. For reasons best known to them, Gujarat Government and Industrialists have been constantly dragged to courts with wild and baseless allegations like “Land at cost of toffee allotted” “Land Allotment without fair and transparent manner allotted” so on and so forth.
It is pertinent to note that the Justice M.B Shah Report has given a clean chit and has found no irregularity in land allotments. Naturally the NGOs and Politician mafia called the Commission “Modi Bachao Commission”. Further in various rulings delivered by the Gujarat High Court, various allotments of lands have been found to be fair, equitable and transparent.
The state of Gujarat follows a well laid down policy for land acquisition and land allotment. Little homework would tell you that the method of valuation adopted by the State is unique and has set benchmark which many states are following.
With so much of literature available and so many judgements finding nothing wrong in land allotment cases by Gujarat Government, I wonder what prompted The Economic Times to publish this article (read hit job ) with such an outrageous headline ?
Vide these tweets the Journalist tries her best to put forth the fact that her attempt was to only show facts. Then the next question is why such a judgmental headline?
A single word without any proof or a baseless allegation is enough for Congress & AAP cheerleaders to “trend” hashtags on twitter. Based on this article the Congress Party went on to demand the immediate resignation of Gujarat CM Smt. Anandiben Patel and further SIT probe into these baseless allegations.
Based on public documents as filed with the Registrar of Companies the article lists business transactions between connected entities of Anar Patel and her business partners. First start the article with a wild allegation that cheap land was allotted and then give details of perfectly legal business transactions is clearly an attempt to paint these transactions as “shady”.
The clarification from Wildwood Resorts and Realtors Pvt Ltd clearly states that during that period, they had bought similar porperties from private parties at Rs 5-6 per sq metre. Under the extant policy the Gujarat Government allotted land to Wildwoods Resorts at INR 15 per sq.mtr which is 3 times the prevalent market rate at that time.
Moreover Anar Patel was nowhere connected to this Company when these land allotments were made to this Company.
Governance as demonstrated by Gujarat Government over the years has resulted in setting up of a robust and transparent system. The Govt of Gujarat has won several awards as well for their efforts. Such futile attempts via “Yellow Journalism” only exposes hidden agenda of these so called elite journalists.
The article also makes no mention of even a minor policy aberration or a policy being tailor made to benefit a particular party. There is no mention of rules being flouted. The only take-away from the entire post seems that someone connected with Gujarat CM’s daughter got a “good” land deal. And even the basis for calling this deal “good” has not been explained!
Every person has the right to ask questions. My two cents is while you allege wrongdoings of a private citizen, place your questions on firm footings. Otherwise such gibberish under the garb of ‘investigative’ journalism will certainly expose the hidden agenda in the era of Social Media.
