In a Nagpur court, a petition has been filed against Union Minister Nitin Gadkari for deceiving 1,300 shareholders of an industrial cooperative society, Polysack. Other shareholders include RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. The petition has been filed by two former shareholders of Polysack, Bhagwandas Rathi and Ajay, reported the National Herald.
The Minister has been accused of taking a loan of Rs.42 crore from Nagpur based Saraswat Cooperative Bank Ltd. in 2012, by illegally mortgaging land belonging to the cooperative.
This land was then transferred to a Gadkari owned company, Purti Solar System and Gadkari used this land again to secure another loan for Purti’s closely affiliated, GMT MIning , as per the petitioners. Gadkari shut down the cooperative without the consent of other shareholders in 2003. Till that time, Polysack Industrial Co-operative was run from Gadkari’s house.
The petitioners allege that with the cooperation of government officials, forged documents were used and the documents disclosing the invalid mortgage were destroyed.
The dealings of Polysack are questionable as the Maharashtra Government allotted it a plot measuring 4,950 square meters along with financial assistance of Rs.25 lakh, in April, 1989, two years before it was registered and started functioning. Only Rs.99,000 were paid as premium by Polysack. The registration number of Polysack Industrial Cooperative was NGP/CTY/PRD/1//518/88-89.
Bhagwandas Rathi said that that the delay occurred in filing the petition because all evidence was destroyed. It took him time to collect information through RTI applications. He added that it is illegal to transfer the property of a cooperative to any individual or company. This makes them accused under Sec. 420, Sec. 467, Sec.468, Sec.471 and Sec. 472, according to the petition.
Bhagwandas Rathi claims that there is no information regarding the transfer of the plot in the government records and no record of any permission from the cooperative society to mortgage the land. Also, the share capital of Rs.25 lakhs taken from Maharashtra government is outstanding and that the Maharashtra government has shifted the blame to the Registrar of Co-operative societies.