Lucknow Agra Expressway
Expansion
New revelations have come to light in the investigation of the Income Tax Department of the real estate company Pintel and Amravati Group, which bought the land of Kathingara village of Kakori. It is learned that soon after the construction of the Agra-Lucknow Expressway began, both the real estate companies approached the farmers of Kathingara village and started entering into agreements to buy land. Till then the farmers had no idea that the value of their land was going to increase manifold.
In fact, the land of 13 villages of Kakori was acquired for the construction of Agra-Lucknow Expressway. These included Adampur, Indarwara, Gaharwara, Rewari, Nattora, Kathingara, Ajmal Nagar, Bada Gaon, Bheliya, Jatiyamau, Karimabad, Mahmudpur, Baharan and Sarosa Bharosa. According to the layout plan, the underpass of the expressway was to be built in Kathingara village. After this, the prices of the land around this village were bound to increase manifold.
After the state government’s acquisition process was completed, both real estate companies started buying land in this village. As a result, most of the land was bought before the expressway was inaugurated in November 2016. On the other hand, demonetisation brought a golden opportunity for the companies. During this, the old notes were handed over to the farmers in lieu of the remaining value of their land and the registration was done in a hurry. Officials suspect that the black money of various politicians and bureaucrats was used to buy these lands, which there was a rush to hide after demonetisation.
Suddenly formed three dozen companies
Investigation revealed that prior to 2016, Pintel and Amravati Group were not working on any major project in the real estate business. Suddenly, from the year 2017 to 2021, with the formation of more than three dozen companies, real estate projects worth about Rs 4000 crore started in Lucknow. Both the companies bought most of the land near Agra-Lucknow Expressway and Purvanchal Expressway by paying exorbitant prices to the farmers. When the directors of the companies were questioned about the source of capital raised in these projects, they could not give any satisfactory answer. Similarly, he kept avoiding the inquiry regarding the purchase of the land of Kathingara village. This confirmed the benami of these properties. After that hundreds of bighas of land of all 70 cell deed were seized.