New Delhi: Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and 38 others have been charged for corruption, criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal misconduct by a public servant in the Manesar land scam case on the directions of a special CBI court in Panchkula. The alleged scam pertained to the purchase of land from farmers at low rates and then releasing it to big corporates for huge profits.Congress leader Hooda, who is now the leader of opposition in the Haryana assembly, along with his former principal secretary M.L. Tayal and others have been accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of benefiting private players by allowing land acquisition proceedings, that were initiated in Gurugram’s (then Gurgaon) Manesar, Naurangpur and Laukhnoula areas in 2004, to lapse.The Bureau charged that after the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) issued a land acquisition notification, private entities had approached landowners and told them that the government would acquire their land cheaply, thus luring them to sell their land at low rates.After this, the Congress government abandoned the acquisition proceedings in 2007. Moreover, it has been alleged that the applications filed by the builders, who had purchased the land at low rates, for grant of licences and change of land use were also processed by the Hooda government “in illegal and arbitrary manner”.The CBI charged that after all the land had been bought by the “land mafia” under the threat of acquisition, an order was passed by the Director of Industries on August 24, 2007, releasing the land in favour of the builders, their companies and agents.Apartments in Gurgaon. Representative image. Photo: Flickr/Dora Smith CC BY NC 2.0Court directed expeditious proceedingsEarlier, the special CBI judge Jagdeep Singh had observed that since the matter pertained to a case involving a legislator, “proceedings in such cases are to be conducted expeditiously”.The CBI had in 2018 filed a chargesheet against Hooda, Tayal and others in connection with the land scam. The case pertained to the notification issued to acquire 912 acres and 7 marla land in Manesar, Lakhnaula and Naurangpur villages in Gurgaon under section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 on August 27, 2004.The CBI alleged that the Hooda government’s action resulted in huge loss of money to the exchequer while resulting in wrongful gains to private players at the expense of landowners, who were forced to sell their land in panic.Five senior officers to also face corruption, conspiracy chargesTaking cognisance of the matter, the special court in its order on December 1 also summoned officers who were not named as accused but were cited as witnesses by the CBI in the chargesheet. According to the Indian Express, among these officers is senior IAS officer and home secretary Rajeev Arora, who was managing director of the HSIIDC from 2005 to 2012. He was booked under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and ordered to face trial in the case.The other officers summoned by the CBI court are former IAS officer D.R. Dhingra, former chief town planner (CTP) of HSIIDC Surjit Singh, former CTP (town and country planning) Dhare Singh and former deputy superintendent (town and country planning) Kulwant Singh Lamba.The court held that there was prima facie evidence against all of them for criminal conspiracy and cheating under the Prevention of Corruption Act.In the case of Arora, who was MD of the HSIIDC when the scam took place, the CBI has been instructed to submit the sanction of prosecution by the Haryana government, according to The Tribune.Builder who gained from deals declared proclaimed offenderMeanwhile, the CBI court has also declared builder Atul Bansal, who is believed to have earned the largest amount of profits due to the scam, a proclaimed offender in the case.It has also been alleged that the private builders operated within a conspiracy hatched by public servants and politicians, who were involved in the decision to release the land for development and change of land use after stalling the acquisition process. The case would next come up for hearing on December 17.