Two former Maharashtra ministers convicted in Rs 110-crore Jalgaon housing scam case

A Jalgaon District court has convicted two former Maharashtra Ministers Suresh Jain of the Shiv Sena and Gulabrao Deokar of the NCP along with 46 others in the Rs 110 crore Jalgaon housing scam case.

The scam pertains to the Jalgaon Municipal Corporation building 11,000 subsidised houses for the poor in 1996.

The Jalgaon civic body took a Rs 110 crore loan from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited. However, the project was beset with a number of irregularities, for instance the Khandesh Builders that was chosen for the job for building the tenements was given an advance of Rs 11.56 crores without interest by the civic body to begin the project. The project was conceived only with an eye to earn profits could be seen from the fact that the land on which the houses were to be built did not belong to the Jalgaon civic body, while some were private lands others belonged to the state government.

Khandesh builders could not complete the project within the stipulated time and the Jalgaon civic body kept on extending the date for completing the project without taking any action against him. In fact he was given a number of concessions by the civic body to complete the project. The scam was unearthed after the then Municipal Commissioner of Jalgaon Pravin Gedam came to know of the scam and complained to the police following which an investigation was launched. Jain and Deokar who were involved along with those heading Khandesh builders former Mayor of Jalgaon, the CEO of the civic body along with other officials had been booked in the case.

The Jalgaon police took six years to investigate the case however they found that the payments made to the Khandesh builders were routed to firms that were controlled by Jain and his family members.

Out of the 5,000 houses in which the construction began only 1,500 have been completed as of yet. The prosecution has demanded that the accussed be sentenced to life imprisonment.