Those who bought villa plots in the controversial Emaar project have to pay a heavy price for concealing the actual sale price of the property. The income-tax department and the state stamps and registration authorities are swooping down on them because of the hidden money. The I-T department has already been digging into the source of the concealed amounts and in some cases even made the owners cough up tax for the unaccounted money, while the registration authorities have just begun the exercise.
“As per Sections 26 and 64 of the Stamp Act, concealing the actual sale consideration and thereby avoiding the higher stamp duty and registration fee attract penal provisions,” a senior revenue official said. Besides collecting the difference in amount from the plot owners, the state authorities will impose one per cent penalty per annum on the hidden amount, he added.
Sources told this newspaper the I-T department obtained information from the probe agencies about the case and served notices to all the buyers to explain the source of the excess am-ount they paid to Emaar. In some cases, the owners were found to have paid Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000 per sq.yd. and in some cases as much as Rs 40,000-Rs 50,000 per sq.yd. in excess of the declared amount. At least in half a dozen cases, owners were found to be making use of their black money to pay the excess amount.
CBI goes soft on some buyers, spares others
Disparities have begun to emerge in the Central Bureau of Investigation’s probe into the high-profile Emaar township scam and MP Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s investments case.
The scam in the Emaar case lay in the selling of villa plots for around Rs 50,000 per sq.yd by the accused, Emaar MGF, Koneru Prasad, Stylish Holmes and others, but this excess amount has not been shared with the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC), causing a loss to the state. However, the CBI failed to probe why former CM N. Chandrababu Naidu’s family was favoured by the accused and why several VIPs, including Mr Naidu’s daughter-in-law Brahmani, paid only Rs 5,000 per sq.yd for a villa plot while some others paid as much as Rs 50,000 per sq.yd.
In Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy’s investment case, the crux of the allegation is that companies and individuals such as Nimmagadda Prasad were favoured by YSR’s government, and that they invested in Jagati and other firms owned by Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy as a quid pro quo arrangement by buying shares at premium rates. The CBI, in its chargesheet, said that those who had not paid any money in excess of the rate of Rs 5,000 per sq.yd for the villa plots were related to Mr Koneru Prasad. Some of the buyers were family members of VIPs.