chandigarh in the run up to the 2014 assembly elections in haryana bjp had constantly attacked then chief minister bhupinder hoodaled congress government for corruption in land deals no wonder once elected the party treaded cautiously in issuing licences to developers and builders or granting change of land use clu permissions the two main sources of systematic sleaze related to real estate in governmenttoday hooda is faced with cbi trial in six cases related to land scams some of which give bjp a handle to target congress chief sonia gandhi and her soninlaw robert vadra too four of the six cases are directly linked to the town and country planning department tcp which hooda headed all through his 10 years as the cm khattar too had kept the department with him but unlike the congress leader he transferred the power to grant licences to the director general of tcp department in 2016bjp was alone or even first in attacking hooda and his government on the issue six mlas and their kin were caught on camera taking money to issue clus in a sting operation conducted by inld men in 2013 later the lokayukta had ordered registration of corruption cases against all of them all these six mlas fought and lost the 2014 electionsthat the government approach in dealing with the prickly land issue is visible for example during hoodas tenure from february 2005 to october 2014 1534 licences were issued while during khattars fiveyear regime till now 365 have been issued see graphic for details of these 269 were for affordable housing the bjp government issued 188 licences under its deen dayal jan awas yojnaaffordable plotted housing and 81 under the affordable housing project category hooda had given 49 licences under the affordable housing categorysimilarly the land for which licences were issued during hoodas tenure added up to 24254 acres the number comes to 4531 acres during khattars rule for reference the total area of chandigarh including the forest patch and sukhna llake is 28000 acres in terms of land resource thus and with better planning the state could have set up its separate capital of the same sizenow the state government has set up a system of online process and authorised deputy commissioners to chair the committee for issuance of clu permissions of the area of small pieces of plotstalking about his governments approach in the whole matter cm khattar said licences are granted on 5 to 15 acres under deen dayal jan awas yojana and the maximum size of a plot in such a scheme could be 150 square metres keeping in view its success the government has implemented the scheme in cities with high population density he addedthese are some of the more logical of the state governments efforts to streamline the process as compared to officially changing the name of haryana urban development authority huda to haryana shehri vikas pradikaran hsvp so that it does not sound like the name of the former cm anymorehistory