Casting a shadow on the allotment of land in Rajiv Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park (RGCTP) at reduced rates, the special audit conducted by ministry of home affairs has observed that the basis of fixing reserve price at different rates on the same campus could not be ascertained from the available records.

It states, It is not understandable as to how and why valuation was done on the lower side. No input, recommendation or examination was asked for by a different related department of the administration. The report further says that it is not clear to the audit on what ground the rates were reduced when there was an increasing trend of market rates of land on freehold basis in major cities of the country. Due to this, a loss of over Rs 2.8 crore was suffered by the administration.

The audit has also raised objections on the allotment of hotel site in the IT park to Kujjal Builders. The report says that it was noted that the business hotel site land measuring 3.94 acres without permissible ground coverage of 40% was to be auctioned on December 3, 2005. The auction could not be conducted due to non-competitive rates as only one bidder turned up.

For the next date, the original terms and conditions were modified by increasing the floor area ratio of the hotel site from 1.25 to 1.50 and deleting the eligibility condition of allowing only three companies or consortia. Five agencies eventually took part in the open auction held on March 9, 2006 and the highest bid by DLF/Kujjal was accepted by the board of members.

However, it is not clear that when earnest money amounting to Rs 25,00,000 had been deposited by DLF Universal Ltd, then how the land was allotted to Kujjal Builders. In view of audit, the allotment of land to Kujjal Builders without it having deposited the earnest money, as was required by the bidding document, was irregular and needs investigation, reads the audit report.

Further, the non-recovery of interest in respect of conditions of allotment letter shows that the agency had been favoured by putting the government to loss. The short recovery may be calculated and got recovered, it suggests.