New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday attached 14 industrial plots worth around Rs 30.34 crore, as part of its money-laundering probe into the Panchkula Industrial Plots Allocation Scam, where several industrial-grade plots were allocated to people close to then Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who was the ex-officio Chairman of HUDA at the time.
The ED has said that it has provisionally attached these 14 plots, as they were "fraudulently allocated", thus making it part of the proceeds of crime. Officials here said that ED's investigation under the PMLA has revealed large-scale irregularities in the way these plots were allocated, during Hooda's time as Haryana CM.
The financial probe agency found that these plots were priced as extremely low rates with respect to their market value, which would have been four to five times of what they were priced at. Officials said that despite a High Court order prescribing specific criteria to allocate these plots, the Haryana government had altered them 18 days after the last date of application was over, leaving all applicant data available with HUDA.
The ED alleged that marks for certain criteria were altered to favour pre-selected applicants. "The entire interview process was vitiated and compromised as no formal record of marks allocation was kept," it said.
The ED's probe has also revealed that the plots were allocated to people close to then CM Hooda, personally or through connections to his political party.