Sunday, January 6, 2019

CBI sleuths raid premises of IAS officer and UP govt staff
Illegal Grant Of Mining Leases: Probe Agency Books 11 People


Rohan.Dua@timesgroup.com

Lucknow:06.01.2019

CBI personnel on Saturday swooped down on residences of 2008 batch IAS officer B Chandrakala and several government employees on a directive by Allahabad HC to probe illegal grant of mining leases in UP between 2012 and 2013. The CBI registered its third FIR in the case and booked 11 people for extortion, theft and criminal conspiracy. Five preliminary enquiries have been registered by the investigating agency in the last two years.

Besides the high-profile IAS officer B Chandrakala, then Hamirpur district magistrate, the sitting SP MLC Ramesh Mishra andthe former BSP 2014 Lok Sabha candidate Sanjay Dixit have also been named ccused.

CBI teams across Kanpur, Lucknow, Hamirpur and Noida, rummaged through furniture, almirahs, sofa sets, kitchenware and drawers in Chandrakala’s home at Sapphire Homes and Villas on Fawn Brake Avenue in Lucknow. A separate CBI team carried out simultaneous raids at Mishra’s residence in Kanpur.

Chandrakala, who earned the sobriquet of Lady Singham after her videos of leading anti-corruption crusades went viral during the SP regime, is currently on study leave. She served as DM at Meerut, Bulandshahar and Bijnor apart from Hamirpur, where mining licences were illegally allotted.

The FIR is based on directions of Allahabad high court, which ordered a probe after a civil writ petition was filed in January 2013 during SP regime.

The probe was commissioned after the complaint that several private people, in connivance with government officials, were allegedly allowed to loot minerals after excavation. Illegal mining was taking place at Shamli, Hamirpur, Saharanpur, Deoria, Fatehpur, Siddharth Nagar, CBI officials said.

CBI also sent a separate team to Hamirpur, where alleged licences were sold without following e-tendering procedure and interrogated several businessmen.

During raids in Lucknow and Noida, CBI said it seized cash of over ₹12.5 lakh, property documents and 1.8 kg of gold from a Ram Avtar Singh, who served as a senior clerk in the UP mining department.

A mining excavator and lease holder Adil Khan, has also been named in the FIR along with then mining clerk Ram Ashrey Prajapati, businessmen Dinesh Mishra, Ambika Tiwari and Karan Singh.

Chandrakala had more FB followers than Akhilesh Yadav & Arvind Kejriwal


Lucknow

: The ambitious IAS officer B Chandrakala, 39, embroiled in a sand mining scam in UP, had during her tenure hired an agency for brand-building on social media sites. Custom-made videos were routinely sent to news channels and social media sites to enhance her image as a lady crusader against a corrupt system.

Her success in branding herself online was such that at a point in mid-2017, Chandrakala outnumbered then UP CM Akhilesh Yadav’s numbers of followers, with 85 lakh followers on Facebook, ahead of even Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal.

She was believed to be close to then mining minister Gayatri Prajapati, now facing imprisonment. TNN

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