BHUBANESWAR: More skeletons are tumbling out of the government closet on the issue of sale of Lingaraj temple land to private persons even as the district administration on Sunday stopped construction activities after the matter snowballed into a controversy.
The then revenue secretary Bishnupada Sethi had asked the Khurda Collector to refer the matter of wrong recording of Lingaraj temple land as reported by the director of land records, Cuttack to Crime Branch for investigation.
In a letter on September 23, 2020, he had also asked the Collector to conduct a detailed verification of the property of Lord Lingaraj with reference to ‘Sabik’ records and furnish a status report within a month. However, after the letter of the revenue secretary, Hrushikesh Das in whose name the land was recorded sold the land to P Kiruthika, wife of B Prabhakaran on November 6, 2021 for Rs 6.45 crore.
The patta was issued in her favour within 15 days. Sethi’s letter had called for a thorough study of the matter. “Tenancy will not be created against trust property under the provisions of OLR Act and therefore the recording of Lord Lingaraj’s land in favour of private persons is clearly a violation of statutory principles and malafide on the part of settlement officials,” the letter said.
He had said that the director of land records had brought to the notice of the government that khata no 1935 of Bhimpur village was recorded in the name of Lingaraj Mahaprabhu. Raising the issue at a media conference on Monday, Congress spokesperson Manoj Mohapatra asked why the matter was not referred to the Crime Branch by the Collector as directed by the revenue secretary.