A Chhattisgarh cabinet minister Brijmohan Agrawal’s wife is facing allegations that she acquired a portion of the state’s forest land and building a resort on it.
Sarita Agrawal, according to news agency ANI, allegedly acquired 4.12 hector of the Chhattisgarh forest land, raising many questions on propriety and conflict of interest.
Sarita along with her son is the director in the companies, Aditya Srijan Private Limited and Purbasa Vanijya Private Limited. These two companies are currently constructing the resort, Shyam Vatika, at the forest land.
The land in question originally belonged to Vishnu Ram Sahu, a farmer, who had donated the same to the government to the then Madhya Pradesh Water Resources (WRD) department in the year 1994 for Public welfare before the state Chhattisgarh had become an independent state.
The land was later transferred to the forest department. Nine years later, Rs 22.90 lakh was spent on the afforestation of this land. The resort, namely Shyam Vatika, is being constructed near Sirpur area in Chhattisgarh.
The alleged corruption was highlighted in March 2015 when a member of Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, Lalit Chandranahu urged the collector to investigate the matter. Chandranahu in his letter, had alleged that while the piece of land was donated to the government, the revenue records did not include the information.