Navi Mumbai land deal to be scrapped after legal opinion: Maharashtra CM

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis announced on Wednesday evening that the controversial Navi MumbaiCIDCO land deals would be cancelled after taking opinion of law and judiciary department. “The allotment of land to farmers will, however, not be cancelled as farmers have already earned money through sale of land. Only the builders will pay the price,” he said. He threatened to cancel all 200 controversial land deals that had taken place during Congress-NCP regime. The opposition leaders had charged a few days ago that chief minister’s office was involved in the scam. Fadnavis pointed out that the decisions were taken at additional collector level and CMO was not even informed. On ease of doing business, the CM said that state’s ranking had gone down from 10th to 13th because of failure of government to prepare cadastral maps of two districts. “We have got 93 marks out of 100, but if the maps are taken into account then we have got 97.5 marks. Moreover, an international institute has ranked the state first in ease of doing business. Improvement in India’s ranking from 140th to 100th was mainly due to reforms in Maharashtra,” he added. The CM told the house that the state got 100% marks in access to information and transparency. “We will, however, make all efforts to increase the marks of Maharashtra to above 95,” he said.