In his reply submitted on Thursday, the Chief Secretary stated that he was the Industrial Development Commissioner at the time and in that capacity had issued the orders for an inquiry, sources said.

On August 12, Mayawati had asked Chief Secretary Gupta to explain why action against the accused government officials was delayed for nearly two years when she had taken a decision to cancel the allotments on July 31, 2007.

On August 11, 15 officers were placed under suspension and an FIR was lodged against them while action was also ordered against a retired IAS officer.

Sources said the Chief Secretary stated that Balwinder Kumar had submitted two reports in September 2007. He observed that it was a case of “collective responsibility” where a number of officials were involved in the decision-making process.

Kumar recommended that an inquiry should be conducted by a specific investigation agency for fixing the responsibility of individual officials, the chief secretary has stated.

On this, A K Srivastava, the then principal secretary (Industry), had recommended that the inquiry should be entrusted to Meerut Divisional Commissioner Devendra Chaudhary for carrying out an independent probe and fix responsibility of each official.

Atul Gupta, the then industrial development commissioner, approved the proposal and in October 2007, the divisional commissioner of Meerut was directed to conduct an inquiry and submit a report within 15 days.

Chaudhary, however, submitted his report in April 2008. By then, Atul Gupta had been posted as the chief secretary.

Land use remained unchanged during allotment: govt tells HC
Allahabad: Defending the Mayawati government’s decision to suspend 15 officers in the Noida hotel plot allotment case, UP Advocate General Jyotindra Mishra on Thursday told the Allahabad High Court that land was allotted to the hotel owners without changing the land use, as required under the government rules.

Mishra told the Bench of Justice Ravindra Singh and Justice Y C Gupta that the rate of Rs 7, 400 per square metre — at which the plots were allotted in 2006 — was reserved only for industries. It cannot be treated as a fixed rate for allotment of plots to hotel owners, Mishra told the court.

The provision of bids and tenders, which were necessary for making such allotments, were not followed, indicating that the Noida Board had executed the ‘deal’ in a pre-planned manner thus inviting legal action from the government, he added. Mishra said in 2008, the Bench of Justice B S Chauhan and Justice Arun Tandon had observed that the allotment was not done in accordance with law after the hotel owners moved High Court against the government’s order to cancel the allotment. The BSP government claims that the allotment led to the loss of Rs 4,721 crore to the state exchequer.