Bindra named in Chandigarh cricket stadium scandal

Former Punjab chief secretary V K Khanna on Monday alleged that his successor and incumbent, R S Mann, and Punjab Cricket Association president Inderjit Singh Bindra, have "gifted" land and money to the PCA to build a cricket stadium at Mohali withyout getting sanction from the higher authorities.

Neither the governor nor the cabinet had taken any decision in connection with this deal, Khanna, now presiding over the Sales Tax Tribunal in Chandigarh, said.

Khanna alleged that the governor had sanctioned the use of a 10.5 acre plot of land for building the sports complex. But Mann in his capacity of chairman of the housing board transferred the land to the sports department and steered things so that the land was used for the purpose of a cricket stadium, instead.

This irregularity, Khanna said, was brought to his notice in January 1996 by the secretary of the Punjab Urban Planning and Development Authority, who told him that Mann had transferred the land without the approval of the competent authority.

Khanna said the sports deparment, after receiving the land from the housing board, decided to give it to a private body for construction of a cricket stadium, rather than the proposed sports complex. Bindra, Khanna alleges, then transferred the land to the PCA of which he was the president, by getting the lease deed signed by national selector and PCA functionary M P Pandove, a long-time acolyte of Bindra's. This, Khanna points out, amounts to Bindra treating the land as his own.

Khanna said that even as no memorandum was put before the Cabinet to alienate land to the PCA, it was even more surprising for the housing board, itself facing a financial crisis, to give more than Rs 10 million to the PCA for the building of the stadium.

Khanna said that it was because of these serious lapses that he had issued a notification to the CBI on the specific orders from the previous Congress regime to investigate the matter. He said that no names had been mentioned in the notification, leaving the matter open to be looked into.

Khanna had been expelled from the state IAS Officers' Association three days back for his "motivated, hasty and malicious" action in referring two cases, including this, to the CBI during the fag end of the previous Congress regime. Khanna in turn has alleged that his expulsion was orchestrated by officers close to the present Akali-BJP regime.