Scam? No money changed hands, says Gen Prakash-Tribune News Service :Veteran Prabhjot Singh Chhatwal PLS Retd.

Scam? No money changed hands, says Gen Prakash:Tribune News Service.
Excerpts from the interview
Karan Thapar: So, on the basis of what you have just told me,
is the use of the term, ‘scam’ inappropriate or even misleading?
General Prakash: Absolutely, because the land doesn’t belong
to the Army, no money has exchanged hands. The land remains
with the original owners. So, where is the scam? I just don’t
understand that.
Karan Thapar: Many people say that at the bottom of this whole
sorry affair there is a rivalry or a bitterness between Lt Gen V K
Singh, the present Army Commander of Eastern Command and
who is going to be the next Army Chief, and yourself ?
General Prakash: This is absolutely wrong. We have been
colleagues as young officers, we had our postings together. There
is no question of any rivalry or any bitterness. Even during my
tenure as military secretary, he is one gentleman who had never
recommended any case to me. I am very clear on that.
New Delhi, February 28.The so-called Sukna land scam, which
has rocked the Army establishment for the past few months and
hogged headlines in the media, is just a lot of hot air, claims the
former Military Secretary to the Army Chief, Lt Gen Avadesh
Prakash (Retd). The General, who retired on February 1, happens
to be one of the officers accused of cosying up to a property
developer in Siliguri and of pressurising the Corp Commander to
withdraw his initial objection on security reasons to construction
work outside the Sukna military station in Darjeeling.
Breaking his silence to Karan Thapar in the CNN-IBN programme
Devil’s Advocate on Sunday evening, the retired General claimed
that the 70 acres in question belonged to the Chumta tea estate
and that developers did not need any permission from the Army.
“The local military authorities have no jurisdiction whatsoever
on the land adjacent to their area,” said General Prakash in reply
to a question.
But asked why in that case the promoter had sought a no-objection
certificate from the Corp Commander at Sukna and why the
Commander had turned down the request at first, General Prakash
replied, “May be… they just wanted to have (good) neighbourly
relations with the military authorities there… that’s all I can say.”
He claimed that the Corp Commander’s initial objections were
related to the promoter’s plans to put up malls and resorts on the
land. But when promoters decided to put up a school instead,
General Prakash told Thapar, the Corp Commander ‘must have
changed his decision’.
General Prakash admitted that he knew the promoter, Dilip
Agarwal, and that he accompanied him to meet Maharaja Gaj
Singh of Jodhpur in Jodhpur to discuss the possibility of securing
the franchise of a school to be set up at Sukna. He also admitted
visiting Sukna in the company of the promoter and visiting the
land for ‘five or 10 minutes’. In hindsight, he agreed, the actions
were possibly errors of judgment and improper. But ‘at that point
of time I thought it was a harmless thing to do’, he confessed.
In another candid confession, the retired General admitted to
have taken up the issue of the school with the Corp Commander
at Sukna. But he defended his decision by saying that as Military
Secretary he would receive ‘recommendations’ from colleagues,
senior officers and even retired senior officers, which he would
then pass on to the appropriate officer for consideration. The
officer then would examine the issue, analyse it and put it up for
direction of competent authority, he pointed out before asking,
“Now if a decision is taken by that competent authority, do you
believe that the person who recommended the case is to be
blamed?”
Significantly, however, the retired officer dismissed reports of a
rivalry between him and Lt Gen V K Singh, Chief of the Eastern
Command, who is slated to take over as the Army Chief on March 31.
In fact, General Prakash handed out a compliment to the future
Army Chief when he singled him out for ‘never recommending any
case’ to him.
General Prakash, who was indicted by a Court of Inquiry in
December, had appealed to the Armed Forces Tribunal which
ordered a retrial and gave General Prakash and other accused
officers a chance to cross-examine witnesses, an opportunity they
were denied during the inquiry.
In the interview telecast on Sunday evening, General Prakash,
however, claimed that Army rules did not allow disciplinary
action once administrative action had already been initiated.
He also felt that the Court of Inquiry was not constituted in
accordance with rules and should have been re-constituted.