HYDERABAD: Giving green signal for e-auctioning of identified properties of scam-hit Agri Gold company through district committees, a division bench of the Hyderabad High Court on Friday directed Andhra Pradesh government to constitute committees comprising collector, registrar and legal services authority secretary of the districts concerned for e-auctioning of properties. The bench directed the State CID to cooperate with the committees.
The bench of Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice SV Bhatt was passing this order on batch petitions filed by the Telangana AgriGold Customers and Agents Welfare Association and others seeking CBI probe into the scam and refund of depositors’ money. When the matter came up for hearing on Friday, the bench approved the proposal put forth earlier by State advocate general Dammalapati Srinivas for auction of properties through district committees.
The bench made it clear that the district legal services authority secretary should be the member of the committee instead of district judge as proposed by the government. The AG submitted the forensic audit report to the court for verification purpose.After hearing the counsels for AgriGold management and AP and verifying the values submitted by the company and the government, the bench suggested that the district committee conduct first phase of e-auctioning of the open plots situated in Payakapuram in Vijayawada, 1712 square yards commercial plot at Gandhi Nagar in Krishna district and agriculture land in Veerlapadu mandal and other landed properties in Machilipatnam and Vijayawada.
The bench ordered giving of wide publicity through notifications in newspapers and advertisements and providing required information on website, distribution of pamphlets in gram panchayats and government offices in the next two weeks.The AP CID had earlier submitted a report to the court relating to 10 high value properties which were not mortgaged to nationalized banks and which could be easily disposed of.
The bench posted the matter to June 25 for examining the values of the properties given by the government and the company having huge variation.
In the Akshaya Gold case, only two bids were received against four identified properties. Meanwhile, petitioner’s counsel K Sravan Kumar told the court that a person was ready to pay Rs 1.51 lakh for a property in Kurnool as against the bid price of Rs 1.31 lakh received by the government.The bench then directed for personal appearance of the person suggested by the petitioner’s counsel and the one who bid highest price for the said property, on June 25.While adjourning the case, the bench directed the petitioners to submit estimated values of the 10 identified properties in Telangana submitted by the special counsel of the State government.