Vice-Admiral Sanjeev Bhasin
Last year, Vice-Admiral Sanjeev Bhasin, Commander-in-Chief of the Western Naval Command, wrote to the Navy Chief in Delhi raising serious security concerns about a high-rise residential complex called Adarsh, which had been built in close proximity to defence installations in Colaba in South Mumbai. The letter sparked a spate of controversies about the involvement of bureaucrats and politicians in allowing the complex to come up in alleged violation of rules, and led to the resignation of Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan.
Investigations by The Indian Express have now found that years earlier, Bhasin, seven other Navy officers, and one Army officer had started the process of acquiring a 10,000 sq m plot of land barely 500 m away from Adarsh for another residential society they wanted to build within the Colaba Defence Station area. They wanted to call it Adarsh 2.
Incidentally, Adarsh too had asked for the same plot in 1999 and shifted to its current location after the request was denied.
The officers behind Adarsh 2 had even roped in one of the original promoters of Adarsh, Congress MLC Kanhaiyalal Gidwani, to help them secure the land from the state government as he is believed to have helped with Adarsh.
Documents available with The Indian Express show that the efforts to secure plot C-600 for Adarsh 2 were made between 2004 and 2007. The proposal was to build an apartment block on the coastal land surrounded by a thicket of mangroves, so close to the sea that it got entirely submerged during high tide. Documents show that the eight members had signed the resolution form appointing Commander John Mathew as the chief promoter of the proposed society.
The signatories to the resolution included Bhasin (who was then Rear-Admiral), Vice-Admiral M J Singh (Bhasin’s superior at that time), Lt Gen K S Brar, Surgeon Commander K S K Patrulu, Commander V K Janardhanan, Commander Rajeev Chandoke, Commander J Paul and Rear-Admiral K Mohan Rao. Of them, Singh and Mathew already owned flats in Adarsh since August 2004. Between 2004 and 2007, Gidwani wrote to various government departments and ministers, including then Revenue Minister Narayan Rane, seeking the allotment of plot C-600 for Adarsh 2.
In 2006, the proposed society had even got the City Collector’s office to conduct a boundary demarcation survey for the land. “The state government had written to the Union Environment Ministry for its go-ahead to allot the land but the ministry said that no permission can be given unless the state initiates the process to reclassify the land,” Gidwani told The Indian Express. “The plan to go for a second building was eventually dropped as the land fell in CRZ I and also had a sizeable mangrove cover.”
With Adarsh now caught in a string of controversies and investigations, society members accuse Bhasin of having complained about the society as it refused to give him an apartment there after plans for Adarsh 2 fell through. They also say that the Western Naval Command had sought a detailed list of all 104 members of Adarsh for “security verification”.
“The reasons for the interest in members of the Western Naval Command are obvious. The issue of security raised… is really a red herring,” Adarsh said in its previous affidavit to the Bombay High Court, indicating that the Navy was interested in knowing if there were any apartments available in Adarsh. The affidavit also indicates that defence officials were interested in acquiring the nearby plot for Adarsh 2.
Reached for his comments, Bhasin denied he had signed any document for the proposed Adarsh 2. “I am not aware of any second phase of Adarsh, nor was I ever part of it,” he said. He added that in the wake of the Adarsh controversy, his office had in fact found a 2008 letter from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) asking for the Navy’s No Objection Certificate for a defence society by the name of Raksha on the same C-600 plot.
Sources said that Raksha was a more recent project proposed on the C-600 plot by a different set of military officials after Adarsh 2 failed to take off. “We have written to MMRDA asking them not to process any such letter. We have also written to the Defence Estates Office and initiated the process of finding out details about the plot and acquiring it from the state government under the Works of Defence Act in order to prevent any misuse,” Bhasin said. After acquisition, the plot would be used for operational or for residential purposes in accordance with CRZ norms.
One senior military officer who had signed the resolution for Adarsh 2, however, contradicted Bhasin and said Bhasin had indeed been involved in the project. Adarsh 2 would eventually have been registered under the name Trident Co-operative society if the land had been allotted to it, said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is still in service. “The plot (C-600) lies next to the existing Dolphin and Oyster buildings and we applied for it. But since I was transferred many times, I couldn’t keep track of it,” he said.
-via Indian Express
