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Mumbai: Chief Minister of the Indian State of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan has underscored the need to collect details and maintain properties owned by his State but are located in other States of the country.

Chouhan has asserted that the Madhya Pradesh owned properties should be reconstructed if necessary and properly utilized. He was sharing his views after inspecting the construction of “Madhyalok” and other properties of Madhya Pradesh in Mumbai, capital of Maharashtra, on Sunday.

The Chief Minister reached “Madhyalok” being constructed in Vashi area in Mumbai and reviewed the progress of this 5-story building, which will be completed by July 2016. The Chief Minister also visited Edward Villa at Kolaba and inspected VVIP Rest House, also under construction. Chouhan empahsized that these newly coming up structures should be green buildings equipped with solar panels for energy and rainwater harvesting facility.

Properties owned by erstwhile Princely States

At the time of Independence When the princely States merged with the Indian Union, the State of Madhya Pradesh took over the possession of the public buildings in the erstwhile States, a number of properties owned by these princely states in other states of the country also were taken over by the state Government. These properties, some of them coffee estates, orchards and farms remained out of the scanner of the state government for too long after 1947. Many of these propeties have been encroached and illegally occupied or were being used even as private property by some unscrupulous politicians, bureaucrats or their agents.

A company set up in the 20s of the last century – The Provident Investment Company – to manage properties of the erstwhile Gwalior State and a few investors, over a period of time came to acquire properties in Mumbai from investors who had turned defaulters. These are now worth thousands of crores from the real estate point of view. The Edward Villa, which will now house the Madhya Pradesh Government’s VIP guest house is one such property.

A huge coffee estate on the Kozhikode-Mysore highway in Kerala is another property owned by Madhya Pradesh that was leased to someone in 1950 at a throwaway annual lease and when the lessee stopped paying the lease rent the matter got entangled in legal wrangles.