The Telangana high court on Monday admitted a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition against allotment of costly lands worth hundreds of crores to industrialist Jupalli Rameshwar Rao, a close associate of Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
The petition was filed by Pradesh Congress Committee working president and Malkajgiri MP A Revanth Reddy. He alleged that the KCR government had not only allocated lands to My Home Group owned by Rameshwar Rao, but also exempted them from paying stamp duty worth Rs 38 crore, against rules.
The high court admitted the PIL and served notices on Rameshwar Rao, the state government and also another infrastructure group DLF. The case was deferred by four weeks.
The case relates to developing of real estate venture My Home Bhuja. The YS Rajasekhar Reddy government had allocated 424.13 acres of land to AP industrial Infrastructure Corporation at Survey No. 83 of Rayadurg village of Serilingampalli mandal in Ranga Reddy district in 2016.
The APIIC was supposed to allot the piece of land to Information Technology park and other IT-related infrastructure companies, as per the state IT policy.
Subsequently, the APIIC allotted 31.35 acres worth Rs 580 crore to infrastructure major DLF Ltd for development of buildings for IT companies.
After the land was registered in the name of DLF Rayadurgam Developers Pvt Ltd in September, 2013, the company had written a letter to the authorities stating that it wanted to change the name of the company to “Aqua Space Developers Pvt Ltd.” Strangely, the authorities gave permission to the same.
Later, Aqua Space Developers Pvt Ltd placed another request stating that it be allotted another piece of land in place of the original land registered in its name and also requested for exemption of stamp duty. This was also allowed by the then government.
The petitioner alleged that the Aqua Space Developers is a shell company belonging to My Home Group and the entire exercise was done only to benefit Rameshwara Rao.
Thus, lands worth hundreds of crores of rupees changed hands and allotted to My Home Group which is presently developing the real estate ventures, Revanth alleged.