CBI: Lalu forced babus to appoint those who gifted him land for jobs

NEW DELHI: Lalu Prasad as the then railway minister exerted excessive pressure on ministry officials to clear the applications of Group-D job applicants who gifted land parcels or sold them at dirt cheap rates to him and his family in exchange for railway jobs, CBI told a Delhi court Monday.CBI has named 102 people as accused in the land-for-railway-jobs scam. Lalu’s family acquired over 1 lakh sqft of land for just Rs 26 lakh against Rs 4.39 crore circle rate of the property, it alleged.The agency stressed the fact that multiple applications were cleared the same day while there was no advertisement for the vacancies. “Look at the speed. It is such a tedious process… How can so many applications in bulk be decided instantly? No justification was given to hire substitutes,” special public prosecutor DP Singh told the court.CBI alleged discrepancies in the documents submitted by those given the jobs.