Lokayukta: Book MC officials for fake record

CHANDIGARH:Claiming to be the owners of a shop for the past 170 years, Ishwar Chand and his family were in for a rude shock when officials of Thanesar Municipal Committee produced record of 1849 in the Punjab and Haryana High Court to show that it was a property of the local body.

Ishwar Chand lost the case, but Haryana Lokayukta Justice Nawal Kishore Agarwal (retd) found that the local body itself came into existence in 1867 and that the 1849 record was fraudulent.

Bhartesh Singh Thakur
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, July 17

Claiming to be the owners of a shop for the past 170 years, Ishwar Chand and his family were in for a rude shock when officials of Thanesar Municipal Committee produced record of 1849 in the Punjab and Haryana High Court to show that it was a property of the local body.

Ishwar Chand lost the case, but Haryana Lokayukta Justice Nawal Kishore Agarwal (retd) found that the local body itself came into existence in 1867 and that the 1849 record was fraudulent.

In an order dated July 8, Justice Agarwal has entrusted “the matter to the Additional Director General of Police (CID), Haryana, for an inquiry, who shall constitute an SIT chaired by an officer of the rank of SP… and also take help of revenue officers having impeccable integrity”.

He also ordered an FIR and chargesheet against officials of the Thanesar MC, besides “stern departmental action under Rule 7 of the Haryana Civil Services Rules”.

Ishwar Chand approached a lower court in Kurukshetra in 1993 against an encroachment notice but in 2001 the local body produced record of 1849. He lost the appeal. He approached HC in 2003, but lost there too. He then approached the Lokayukta in 2015 that took note of February 2, 2017, report of then SDM, saying that the MC did not file the “correct written statement during the judicial proceedings”.

A report by the Principal Secretary, Urban Local Bodies, and by the DC were also in Ishwar Chand’s favour.

It emerged in one of the reports that the name of then vice-president of Thanesar MC Jai Narain Sharma was “wrongly entered in the House Tax Register” as the owner of that property.

Shopowner wrongly dispossessed

Ishwar Chand and his family lost ownership of a shop as the Thanesar Municipal Committee produced in courts record of 1849 refuting their claim
He then moved the Haryana Lokayukta that found that the local body itself came into existence in 1867 and that the record of 1849 produced by it was fraudulent