LUCKNOW: Former Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Neera Yadav and CMD of Flex Industries and Engineering Ashok Chaturvedi were on Tuesday sentenced to four years in prison following their conviction in the Noida land scam case by a CBI special court in Ghaziabad.
Neera, who is a retired IAS officer, has been found guilty of committing irregularities when she was the Noida Authority chairperson in 1995-96.
CBI court judge A K Singh also slapped fine of `50,000 each on the two convicts.
After the pronouncement of the judgment, Neera and Chaturvedi were sent to the Dasna jail. While Chaturvedi was handcuffed, Neera was spared.
The CBI court found Neera guilty of violating the rules in allotting an industrial plot in Noida to Flex Industries Limited. Neera is accused in four different cases of wrongful allotment of land.
Neera had got a 300 sq mt plot allotted in her name in Noida’s Sector 32 and later on got it converted to a 450 sq mt plot in Sector 14.
Moreover, the area of the plot was further increased. Bending the rules, she also allotted two plots to her daughters Sanskriti and Sukriti.
In late 2004, the Noida Authority had mooted a housing scheme for common citizens of the country and had invited applications for the allotment of 1,250 plots — of various sizes ranging from 100 sq mt to 500 sq mt in various sectors in the satellite town on the outskirts of the national capital.
There was overwhelming participation with a million applicants.
When the draw for allotment was eventually held after repeated postponements, on July 2, 2005 during the regime of Mulayam Singh Yadav, only the influential from amongst the executive, the legislature and the judiciary and a few from the media could make it.