The Andhra Pradesh police have recently revealed that the poorest in the state own Amaravati land worth Rs 220 crore. They claimed that it can be a major land scam in Amaravati.
According to an investigation by CID, 797 white ration card-holders, each with a monthly income of less than Rs 5,000, bought land worth Rs 220 crore in Amaravati in 2014 and 2015.
The CID has now written to the Income Tax department and Enforcement Directorate asking for an investigation into possible tax evasion and money laundering in the deals.
As per a media report, the letter states that the investigation found that many of the land buyers did not even have a PAN card and paid no income tax.
The CID registered a case of cheating and criminal conspiracy after detecting that white ration card holders were being shown as landowners.
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In the letter to the Andhra Pradesh income tax chief commissioner sent on Wednesday, CID officials stated, “…the investigating officer examined the registrations of suspicious land done during 2014 and 2015 in Amaravati capital area of AP. It came to the light that huge cash transactions took place in purchasing the lands.”
Almost all the 797 white ration cardholders, who bought 761 acres in the Amaravati capital region, are residents of Guntur, the investigation has shown. Of these, 529 don’t have PAN cards. The CID investigation found that the highest number of suspicious transactions took place in Thullur Mandal where the core capital city of Amaravati was planned and the temporary secretariat and high court buildings have come up.
For the uninitiated, after Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the then TDP government had announced that Amaravati would be the new capital of bifurcated AP and pooled 33,000 acres of land in the region next to Vijayawada.
The YSRCP government that came to power in 2019, however, decided to have three separate capitals with Amaravati having only the assembly and all government offices would shift to Visakhapatnam.
CID has already registered a case against former ministers and senior leaders of Telugu Desam Party, Pattipati Pulla Rao and P Narayana, regarding the purchase of assigned land.
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