A special Enforcement Directorate (ED) court in Andhra Pradesh, on Monday, posted the hearing in a case against Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and others, related to alleged irregularities in land allotment to some private companies, to January 21. The court had earlier issued summons, asking all of them to appear before it on January 11, after the case was transferred from a Metropolitan Sessions Judge Court to the ED special court.
Most of those summoned, including representatives of some pharmaceutical companies, appeared in the court. CM Jagan Mohan Reddy did not do so, and his counsel filed a petition to dispense with his attendance, which was granted.
The ED registered cases against Jagan and the other associates on the basis of an FIR filed by the CBI over alleged quid pro quo investments in his companies.
The CBI had filed 11 chargesheets against the YSR Congress Party chief and others, and Jagan has been named as the prime accused in the alleged deals. The cases are related to land allotments to Aurobindo Pharma and Hetero Drug companies, which took place during Jagan’s father and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajashekara Reddy’s regime between 2004 and 2009. Several former ministers and bureaucrats are also accused in the case.
The CBI filed the charge sheet in this particular case and named Jagan, his auditor Vijay Sai Reddy and the directors of both companies. One hundred and fifty acres of land in Jadcherla was allotted to these two companies when YSR was the Chief Minister of united Andhra Pradesh. According to the charge sheet, both these companies invested heavily in Jagan’s firms as quid pro quo for the land allotted to them. Recently, the charge sheet of the case was transferred from Nampally court in the city to the ED court, and the summon was in relation to numbering the case in the ED court.
(This story was first published in The News Minute and has been republished with permission.)
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