Gandhinagar

Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) today registered an FIR(complaint) in connection with National Textiles Corporation(NTC) land deal scandal worth Rs 1700 crore against former Union cabinet minister for Textiles Shankersinh Vaghela who is presently Leader of opposition in Gujarat Assembly and six others including the then Chairman-cum-Managing Director of National Textile Corporation. Vaghela and others are accused of sale of prime property in Mumbai allegedly at “throwaway prices” to a private company.

The FIR comes after over year-long Preliminary Enquiry into the matter. Several incriminating documents related to the land deal(s) of NTC – when the UPA was in power – have been recovered.

Soon after registering the FIR, CBI today started searches at nine locations in four cities–New Delhi, Gandhinagar, Mumbai and Kolkata–including the residence of Vaghela and others which are still going on.

Assets sales committee, that was chaired by Pillai, allegedly changed its stand repeatedly in disregard of existing norms while selling NTC property to private company(s).State-owned NTC manipulated the sale of land by restricting the competitive bidding.

Links to scams:

This report suggests: Probing possible land scam in Mumbai, CBI had initiated a preliminary enquiry against unknown officials of the textiles ministry and National Textile Corporation (NTC) for alleged irregularities in transferring prime land belonging to the erstwhile Madhusudan Mills to a private person in year 2014. The land transfer led to a loss of Rs 1,750 crore to NTC. Kamlesh Mehta of Gowani Builders was reportedly allowed to develop 27,500 square meters of the 80,785 sqm plot belonging to the preindependence mill. The agency had registered a preliminary enquiry on the basis of information that officials of textiles ministry and NTC conspired with the then owner of Madhusudan Mills in Worli.

This report suggests that a mega scam involved the sale of the National Textile Corporation’s land worth over Rs 400 crore at Parel in Mumbai to a private printing press company in December 2007 for just Rs 17.5 crore and that too without recovering the accumulated lease rent of Rs 90 crore becoming overdue for non payment for years.

This another report suggests that the mill land scam could be as big as worth Rs 20,000 crore.

This report provides insights into NTC land deals in Mumbai during Shankersinh Vaghela as Textile Minister.