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Senior Delhi bureaucrat Gramlin complains to Lieutenant Governor against AAP Minister

by IBNS 01 Jun 2015, 07:05 am

New Delhi, June 1 (IBNS) Senior IAS officer Shakuntala Gamlin, whose appointment as the acting chief secretary caused a bitter feud over authority between Delhi Lieutenant Governor and Arvind Kejriwal's AAP Government, has complained to Najeeb Jung that she is being pressurised by a minister for conversion of industrial plots from leasehold to freehold.

In a letter to the Lieutenant Governor, who had appointed her to the chagrin of Kejriwal, Gramlin has alleged that though land does not come under Delhi Government, Industry Minister  Satyendra Jain is putting pressure on him to do as he wishes.
 

"The Industries Minister had been continuously pressing me to submit a note for the Council of Ministers proposing therein conversion of industrial plots in the city from leasehold to freehold even after full facts pertaining to the legal ramifications of the case that the matter was not within the competence of GNCT Delhi had been brought to his notice,"  Gamlin, who is Principal Secretary (Power & Industry), said in her letter, written about two weeks ago, media reports say.
 
The AAP government had recently accused  Gamlin of favouring discoms through a Rs. 11,000-crore loan. 

"Due to oversight or otherwise, some conversion of industrial plots had been ordered in Delhi without the involvement of land owning agency Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the matter is said to be under scrutiny of the Vigilance Department of Delhi Government," Gramlin says in the letter..

"Despite these facts having been brought to the knowledge of the Minister, he kept pressing for a note for the Council of Ministers on the subject and expressed his annoyance on several occasions in this regard," she says. 

The senior IAS officer also said  as per rules, the city government is not involved in the administration of land except through the Lieutenant Governor who acts in these matters on the advice of DDA, in his capacity as its chairman.