The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has directed the Maharashtra government to investigate alleged irregularities in a private land acquisition deal by Mahagenco The Times of India. The land, located in Chhattisgarh, was purchased for compensatory afforestation (CA) to secure forest clearance for the Gare Palma Sector-II coal block
Activist Naresh Chandra Gupta alleges that nearly ₹110 crore of public funds was spent through intermediaries and power-of-attorney setups, questioning if the original landowners actually received the money The utility states the actual procurement cost was ₹93 crore for roughly 530 acres, completed through legally registered sale deeds Land records lacked higher-level verification and historic title checks
Multiple different survey numbers used identical site maps, raising ground survey doubts The Times of India. Some land parcels are untraceable or were previously leveraged as solvency assets
Valuations followed official norms The Times of India. The land received suitability certificates from the Raigarh Divisional Forest Officer and a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from the District Collector before the Chhattisgarh government officially notified it as Reserved Forest in December 2022
- Restricted Bidding Process
The Expression of Interest (EOI) was intentionally buried in low-circulation newspapers to limit public visibility, allowing under-qualified participants to aggregate the massive land holdings
The EOI was posted transparently on company websites and published in government-empanelled newspapers across Raigarh and Raipur, yielding four formal proposals
If the inquiry uncovers systemic flaws in the land titles or acquisition process, it could compromise the project’s mandatory forest clearance, jeopardising operations at the Gare Palma Sector-II coal block
Online users expressed disbelief. that the Maharashtra government is being tasked to investigate a land scandal located in another state.
News Edit KV Raman
