“Buy land, they are not making it anymore,” Mark Twain said once. Land sharks seem to have realised it and are making all kinds of efforts to get their hands on some defence land, albeit at throwaway prices. Sadly, they are not alone in this endeavour. The president of the country, the supreme commander of the armed forces, too wants a piece of the pie.

According information received through an RTI application, president Pratibha Patil has been allotted close to 2,61,000 square feet of prime land in Pune’s Khadki locality, six times more than what she is actually eligible for. Retired defence personnel are up in arms against the move and are vociferously protesting and demanding the land be given back to the army to build homes for servicemen whose families live in slums, but to no avail.

Legend has it that former president Dr Rajendra Prasad was moved by the Bhoodan or land donation movement and handed over his official grant of land to Vinoba Bhave. But Patil is in no mood to relent and the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s recent communiqué shows she wants to hold on to her gigantic piece of land till death.

A report in DNA newspaper quoting Anoop Awasthi, co-founder, Justice for Jawans, said, “The lease of such a land to the president is incorrect and unjustified. The government is using public revenue to build the president’s bungalow. The work on the bungalow started in September, 2011 and almost 20% of construction work is over.”

The same report quoting Cdr (retd) Ravindra Pathak, member, Governing Body and Pension Cell IESM, said, “As per the information we got after filing RTI query, no retired president is entitled to any land. Our question is why the new construction is taking place when there is adequate government accommodation already available in Pune.”

Therefore despite the fact that good accommodation is readily available in Pune for the president for her post-retirement days, she still wants a palatial bunglow built over land that is six times more than what is supposed to be allotted. The rules say the president is allowed accommodation in a built-up area of 4,500 sq ft. If this is not available then an accommodation not exceeding 2,000 sq ft must be hired for the president. According to an RTI reply, there is no provision for building new accommodation or allotment of land for any new construction.

They say the seed doesn’t fall far from the tree. The president is the supreme head of the armed forces of India. If she can indulge in such hanky-panky, it is expected that people from the armed forces do the same thing too. Even if what is being allotted to her was on par and within rules, the very fact that questions are being raised can demoralise the forces and ‘inspire’ others.

It is already known that cheating the army out of land is a walk in the park especially for land sharks and real-estate tycoons. The defence ministry is the biggest landholder in the country with 1.73 million acres of land. The land is given for the purpose of establishing cantonments, offices and residential complexes and most of it lies unused.  Estimates claim over 82,000 acres of prime defence land is lying untouched.

Very recently, the vice chief of the Indian Army, Lt. Gen. Nobel Thamburaj, allegedly joined hands with the defence estates officer, SR Nayyar, in an out-of-court land dispute settlement with a private builder, Kalpataru.

The same group of real estate wheeler dealers was also involved in a case in Mumbai’s Kandivali-Malad area where they allegedly bought land illegally from the defence ministry. Former minister of state for defence production Rao Inderjit Singh and former army chief General Deepak Kapoor have been accused of a role in the scam.

Then there is the case of land misappropriation in Srinagar. Over a hundred acres of prime land surrounding the strategically vital Srinagar Airfield was illegally transferred to private builders by officials of the defence estate office. A defence estates officer and a sub-divisional officer have been suspended following preliminary investigations and a CBI probe has been ordered into the incident.

The Sukna land scam was another blot on the defence establishment. Over 71 acres of prime defence land near the army HQ in Siliguri, West Bengal was given to an educational institution under false pretences. The institution claimed it was to establish a franchise of the Mayo College of Ajmer. Military Secretary Lieutenant General Avadesh Prakash was removed from service following initial reports of the scam and four senior defence officials were implicated.

Perhaps the biggest land scam to hit the government in recent times is the Adarsh Society land scam. Three former chief ministers of Maharashtra including Sushilkumar Shinde, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Ashok Chavan are facing the heat. The society was actually meant to house widows of Kargil war martyrs, but instead flats were sold to army officers, bureaucrats and politicians at throwaway prices.

With all these allegations floating around and a whole lot of mudslinging going on, it looks like the defence establishment is neck deep in a murky mess. And it certainly does not help when your supreme leader is herself accused of shady dealings.

Ordering enquiries and saying that action will be initiated against erring people has become a standard practice. The defence establishment and the government need a thorough clean-up, and they need it now.