Vijayawada: The state government on Tuesday announced in the Assembly that a vigilance inquiry will be constituted into the infamous Sadavarti land scam that runs into thousands of crores.
When YSRC MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy raised the issue in the House during question hour on Tuesday, Endowments minister Vellampalli Srinivas said that the report will be ready in three months.
The Sri Sadavarti Choultry was established in Amaravati in Guntur district before Independence by the then Amaravati Zamindar Raja Vasireddy Venkatadri Naidu. The objective of the choultry was to provide boarding facility for economically weak Brahmin students pursuing Vedic studies.
To meet the future needs of the institution, the Raja had donated 471.76 acres of land that are located in what is today the suburbs of Chennai.
The lands are in the villages of Navalur, Talambur, and Padur in Chengalpattu taluk of Kanchipuram district. Today, these villages form a part of the high-value IT belt of Chennai city and some of these lands flank the costly Old Mahabalipuram road.
Several well-known educational institutes such as Sathyabama University, Hindustan University, campuses of several IT companies, including TCS, resorts, star hotels and gated communities are located adjacent to these lands.
Right after coming to power in 2014, the then TD MLA Kommalapati Sridhar, had written to the then chief minister seeking the sale of the lands of Sadavarti Choultry on the pretext that the lands were being encroached upon. The CMO responded to his letter positively and forwarded it to the Endowments Department on September 12, 2014.
The then AP government issued orders on April 6, 2015 (Memo No: 28228) for the sale of 83.11 acres and the lands were auctioned on March 28, 2016.
To this, Mr Ramakris-hna Reddy said: “The value of an acre of land in Thalambur is Rs 6 crore, according to the government’s estimation. Going by the ventures of private real estate companies in the same locality, the value of the 200-yard plot is around Rs 55 lakh. This means the market value of the land is `13 crore per acre.”
He said the executive officer of the choultry cited encroachments and proposed to sell the land at the upset price of `50 lakh per acre. The department accepted his proposal without any question.
“Generally, in any auction, the sale takes place only when the bidders come up with a better price than that of the upset price. Or else, the government would cancel the auction and call for a fresh one. However, in the auction of the Sadavarti lands conducted on March 28, 2015, exactly the opposite to the general principles of auction took place,” the YSRC MLA said.
He added that the officials stated that there were no buyers for the upset price and took the highest bid — which was far below the upset price — into consideration and confirmed the sale.
Thus, the 83.11 acres of land was sold for `22.44 crore or Rs 27 lakh per acre. The valuable land were purchased at a throwaway price by Chalamalasetty Rama-nujaya’s family along with Mandala Sanjeeva Reddy, M Sunitha Reddy, Chavali Krishna Reddy, M. Suryakiran Mouli, D. Pavan Kumar and R Sivarama Krishna Rao. This auction was cancelled by the AP High Court due to visible irregularities.
