Health minister D.L. Ravindra Reddy raising suspicions over a land auction in Nandagiri Hills in the city may backfire, what with his ministerial colleagues seeing in it ‘ill-conceived propaganda’. The health minister dashed off a letter to Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, demanding that a probe be ordered into the auction of a four-acre plot in Nandagiri Hills at Rs 18.5 crore per acre.
He accused the Hyderabad Metropol-itan Development Authority (HMDA), that put the property up for auction, of reducing the upset price from Rs 23 crore to Rs 18 crore to favour the builder who bought the land, quoting the highest amount in the bid. Sources said that the minister’s letter was an attempt to embarrass the Chief Minister by portraying that irregularities took place in the auction. “Contrary to his (Ravindra Reddy’s) claims, the land was sold through e-bidding, and whoever quoted the high amount, got it,” a senior minister said, adding that the upset price was reduced by the HMDA as there were no takers in the previous rounds of auctions.
The HMDA put off the auction twice — in July 2010 and March 2011 — for bigger plots as no quotations were received. The government reduced the price for smaller plots too from Rs 18,000 per sq yard to Rs 10,000 per sq yard, and that of the Nandagiri Hills plot, from Rs 23 crore to Rs 18 crore. The Chief Minister’s camp also took serious note of the ministers’ attempts to lower the image of the government by writing letters to Kiran Kumar Reddy and leaking them to the media.
Ministers like Botsa Satyanarayana and C. Ramachandraiah, besides D.L.R. Reddy, fell in this category. “Ravindra Reddy has been given a long rope than the maverick P. Shankar Rao, who lost the Cabinet berth for attacking the Chief Minister on trivial issues at the cost of the government’s image,” a minister pointed out. With regard to Mr Ramachandraiah, the Chief Minister, sources said, may take advantage of Rajya Sabha MP K. Chiranjeevi, who was instrumental in the erstwhile Praja Rajyam MLC getting into the Cabinet, too turning hostile to the minister.