Currently under a cloud are the 651-acre Rajiv Gandhi Technology Park (RGTP), inaugurated by the prime minister in September 2005, the 45-acre Medicity project, a multimedia cum film city facility and an amusement park. While phase I and II of the RGTP are functioning, trouble began when the administration started acquiring 270 acres of "farmland" for phase III last year. Much of this is owned by the city’s big shots who, masquerading as farmers, constructed weekend retreats for themselves in violation of the Punjab New Capital (Periphery) Control Act, 1952, which prohibits any non-agricultural activity within a 10-km radius of Chandigarh. While permission was given to construct only a hut and a cattle shed, the notables instead built sprawling farmhouses, some with swimming pools. Today the farms also host commercial ventures like private schools, offices, a gas agency and even a coal depot!
Quite predictably, the farmhouse owners are lobbying hard to get their farmlands exempted from acquisition on the grounds that they’ll serve as the lungs of the city. Ironically, the H.S. Johal family, spearheading the campaign against the governor under the banner of Citizens’ Group, has itself signed an MoU with a well-known builder to set up an IT park on seven acres of their land. A restaurant, food courts, a night club, two multiplex theatres and a technology college have been proposed to be built on it.
Fight club: Bansal (left) and Rodrigues
Bansal, who makes no secret of his dislike of Gen Rodrigues’s style of functioning, wrote to the Union home minister in May 2008, taking up the cause of the ‘farmers’. Among the issues raised by him was the IT Habitat project allotted to M/s Parsvnath Developers within the RGTP. Bansal wrote: "This is a classic case where a non-IT activity has been carried out by terming the real estate development as IT habitat. The exorbitant rates fixed for sale of flats ranges from Rs 52 lakh to Rs 1.25 crore, beyond the reach of young IT professionals. Actually it is the NRIs who are being targeted for the sale."
In its response, the Chandigarh administration pointed out that the project is linked to rehabilitating 25,728 slum dwellers living in unauthorised colonies. Thirty per cent of the revenue earned was earmarked for this. Bansal was perhaps unaware of this, as the Chandigarh administration did not involve him in the decision-making. His anguish over this is is reflected in his note to the MHA: "Questions are posed to me by a large number of people—but in the absence of any democratic forum for discussing the same, doubts persist. These need to be cleared in the interest of transparency and good governance."
There is also a communication lapse in the administration, with Rodrigues’s advisor Pradeep Mehra, said to be close to Bansal, objecting to most of the projects. Rodrigues, meanwhile, told Outlook: "I will not bend rules to suit vested interests and will go strictly by the established law. My work is open to scrutiny and if the central government feels I am wrong, I am prepared to go."
