Bhopal: How land meant for newspapers became a commercial hotspot

Devious plot

It all began in the 1980s when the then Congress chief minister Arjun Singh reserved a 22-acre piece of land in Bhopal for a press complex. In all, 39 plots were allotted at Rs 2.30 per sq ft. The Bhopal Development Authority spent money from its own coffers for developing the area. The newspaper establishments were provided facilities like unhindered power supply.

Before Madhya Pradesh was carved out as a separate state, the hub of all major newspapers in central India was Nagpur. Many newspapers shifted their base of operations to Bhopal when the state came into being in 1956. Arjun Singh, who became the chief minister in 1980, came up with the plan for a press complex purportedly to oblige the media houses.

It was spelled out in the lease agreements that newspaper owners would not use the allotted plots for any other commercial activity. But as the real estate sector boomed in the subsequent years, newspaper houses rushed to reap the benefits. Today, land in press complex goes for over Rs 15,000 per sq ft. This is why the press complex now houses more commercial establishments than media offices.

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Navjeevan closed down in 1990 owing to financial constraints. Many of its employees are still fighting a legal battle for their unpaid dues. The building now houses showrooms of Vishal Megamart and Lotus Electronics.

Another Hindi newspaper that got a plot in 1982 was Navbharat, then one of the fastest growing newspapers in MP. It was so influential that its owner, the late Ramgopal Maheshwari, become the president of Maheshwari Samaj, while his son Praful Maheshwari went to the Rajya Sabha on a Congress ticket.

The heydeys of the newspaper are long over. The Navbharat Building now houses the offices of The Times of India and Videocon. Many publications like Navbharat owe tax dues ranging from Rs 3 crore to Rs 50 crore to the Bhopal Development Authority.

Flouting rules

In 2005, the issue took an interesting turn. Ruling on a petition, the Supreme Court deemed newspaper publication a commercial activity unlike schools and hospitals, and pulled up the state for providing land to media houses at subsidised rates.

The apex court also ordered the state to collect commercial taxes from the media house from the date of the land allocation. The next year, the housing ministry conducted a survey. A copy of the survey report, accessed by Catch, reveals that most publishers have converted their plots into "commercial property" - some have sold it while others have constructed housing and business complexes and rented them out. Some have rented out space to corporate offices.

In 2006, the BDA served notices to all erring publications for changing the land use against the conditions of the lease agreements. The dues have since risen five times but none of the newspaper owners has paid the taxes.

The owners argue that had the government told them at the time of the allotment that it would charge market rates, they would have run their newspapers from some other place. Although none of them is willing to say so openly, most owners want an amicable solution to escape the government pressure just before the election.

Jayant Malaiya, the former housing minister, claims there is "irrefutable evidence of commercial activities in the name of newspaper publication". Although it was Malaiya who cancelled the leases, he too won't give a time frame for when action would be taken against the erring newspapers. The current housing minister Maya Singh says, "The government will soon take some action."

Several committees formed by the regimes of Digvijaya Singh and Uma Bharti to resolve the dispute have yielded no results. The row has become a fulcrum of power balance between the government and the newspapers. The newspaper owners are aware they are at fault but the government isn't taking decisive action against them lest it invite the media's fury.

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