They used to say of Pune that the English-speaking urban class prefer to stay in the Camp area while the Marathi-speaking people stay in the city. That is no longer a reality—the city is growing in all directions with no demographic biases. In the first 10 months of 2007, Pune city saw 1.65 lakh property registrations against 1.97 lakh registrations in 2006 and 1.60 lakh registrations in 2005. The officials are convinced that it will cross the 2-lakh mark this year.

The record number of land deals, however, has not come without a cost. Land grabbing is a malaise has spread its tentacles across the entire district—whether it be Chakan where the international airport is to come up, Maval and Talegaon, the hillside terrain adjoining Lonavla where the rich and the famous have made a beeline or within the city limits. While there are the Development Plan and Development Control rules in place, suggesting that development is planned and under control, the facts are different. There is, in fact, a palpable fear that a huge land scam is waiting to be exposed.

If the biggest land scandal in Pune till date was the Kothrud TDR scam worth Rs 3 crore, recent incidents have put the focus on bogus powers of attorney of farmers being used to raise loans to the tune of Rs 340 crore and modifications in 7/12 extracts altering name of owners and size of land owned to benefit rogue builders, a scam that is estimated to be worth Rs 300 crore.

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