Troubled by the controversy over charges of landgrabbing in their native village in Maharashtra that has now dragged Rashtrapati Bhawan into it, President Pratibha Patil?s family has decided to write to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, explaining their stand and rejecting allegations levelled against them.
?I will be sending relevant papers to the Congress president explaining everything,? Rajendra Shekhawat, MLA son of President Patil told The Indian Express. He, however, said the matter should be seen purely as a Shekhawat family matter. ?I don?t want to associate the issue with Rashtrapati Bhavan at all. After all, I am also an MLA.?
The President?s Secretariat has chosen to remain silent, declining to comment on the issue. The 43-year-old Shekhawat, also known as Raosaheb, said he was pained to see that the issue had been ?contorted? when the facts were simply to the contrary. ?There is no question of land grabbing. In fact, the land is still not in possession with us. It is only an issue related to measurement of our land that was wrongly done, which will now be rectified,? he said.
?I am distressed that such charges are being unnecessarily levelled at our family. Let anyone show one document proving that we have grabbed the land,? Shekhawat said.
The first-time MLA from Amravati, who won after being given a ticket replacing sitting minister Sunil Deshmukh, said the issue had been blown out of proportion by his political detractors. ?It is being publicised by vested interests. It is not (Kishore) Bansod who is doing it, but my detractors who lost the elections against me,? he said.
Displaying revenue department documents and the recent court order relating to the controversial land, Shekhawat said the matter actually dated back to 1964 when his grandfather Ramsingh Jagansingh Shekhawat had purchased 7 acres of land from Mansingh and Madhukar Dikey in Chandrapur village in Amravati district. The elder Shekhawat filed a case before the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court against the Dikeys when they refused to execute a sale deed. In 1982, the court ruled in Shekhawat?s favour and mutation of the land was done subsequently in the name of five relatives of the Shekhawat family. However, complications arose after a farmer, Kishore Bansod, who owned land adjacent to the Shekhawats, said that two acres of his land had been included in Shekhawat?s land. It was based on this contention that re-measurement of the land was ordered last week.
?The problem arose because it was an old case and there were no proper records then. The measurement had been wrongly done, which is why the SDM has now ordered re-measurement. The alignment of the land could change but we will have 7 acres,? said Rajendra Shekhawat, adding that the value of the land was insignificant. ?I have not even been on the land. Even though it is in our native village, I have not even seen it,? he said.