The sale the controversial Sadavarthi lands in Tamil Nadu seems to have come back to square one, with the highest bidders who won the latest auction of the lands backtracking on taking possession of the lands.
During the recent auctions held by the AP Endowments Department as per the Supreme Court directions, Srinivas Reddy and Padmanabhaiah of Satyanarana Builders of Kadapa, won the bid for Rs 60.30 crore to acquire 83.11 acres of land near Chennai. This was nearly Rs 38 crore more than the final bid amount offered by TDP leader Ramanjaneyulu in the first auction.
The high court in fact offered the land to YSR Congress party MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy who agreed to pay Rs 5 crore more than this first bid amount. But with the rivals moving the Supreme Court, the reauction was ordered and it was won by the Kadapa builders.
However, now, even the Kadapa builders are learnt to have backtracked on the ground that it has become politically controversial with the YSRC making it a big political issue. They are refusing to deposit the bid amount.
In the meantime, Tamil Nadu government, too, impleaded in the case stating that the lands belonged to it and AP had no right to auction them.
The YSR Congress is now demanding a comprehensive inquiry into all the land dealing that took place during past three and a half years.
The YSRC MP Y V Subba Reddy said the ruling party had tried to give away Sadavarthi endowment lands on a platter to its coterie and with the intervention of our Party MLA and taking legal recourse the land was reauctioned and the value had increased three times swelling the revenue of the state.
This shows that the state which tied to give the temple land for a meagre over Rs 20 crore and when challenged and the intervention of the court the lands were reacutioned which fetched over Rs 60 crore. The yawning gap shows the level of corruption and the magnitude of nepotism shown in giving away the Sadavarthi lands on a platter to the favoured few.
Though the auction was held as per the court directive, the auction was not conducted in the way it should have been held and the presence of the ministers at the auction shows there were some deviations.
In the first place, the auction notice was not published in national news as the lands were located in a metropolitan city and the baseline price is very high, he said.
