State government to order a probe into land transactions made since November 8 in hill state

DEHRADUN: Chief minister Harish Rawat on Thursday said that state government will shortly order a probe into all land purchase-related transactions made by certain people in Uttarakhand since the demonetisation move on November 8.
Addressing a press conference at the secretariat here, Rawat said that Uttarakhand may entrust the detailed probe either to special investigation team (SIT) or some other government agency to ascertain the identity of those who invested in land purchase and made transactions to covert black money into white.
“We have come to know that certain influential people, including political leaders of certain national parties, had made land-related transactions to convert their black money into white after November 9,” said Rawat.
“It has been officially corroborated that those who made land-related transactions after November 9 did it on being alerted about the demonetisation move . It was done in a calculated way to change their bulk black money into white,” said a senior official in state government.
Accusing certain top central government functionaries of making false statements regarding the development fund for the hill states, Rawat said that since the past two years, the Centre had released an amount of Rs 950 crore out of the total of Rs 2,254 crore. He further said that while the state government has received an amount of Rs 950 crore so far, it has spent a total of Rs 1,400 crore on different development projects. “The state government had to arrange the remaining amount of over Rs 450 crore from its own income-generation resources to meet the expenditure,” he said.