Special report

Ghai LANDS IN TROUBLE
By Mamta Sen

Bollywood director Subhash Ghai’s film academy Whistling Woods International Private Ltd has caused the Maharashtra Government losses to the tune of Rs 150 crores or more, thanks to the generosity of erstwhile Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
The Maharashtra Government had adopted Ghai’s proposal of constructing a plush hi-tech film training institute as a joint venture with Ghai’s banner Mukta Arts. Deshmukh cleared the proposal to allot 20 acres of land in Film City, in suburban Mumbai, at what were throwaway prices. According to well placed sources, Ghai was given the land for a mere Rs 3 crores, when according to Mantralaya officials, the cost of the land was nearly Rs 150 crores then and today exceeds Rs 200 crores in the open market. As part of the deal, the State Government was prepared to hand over the 20 acres of land to Ghai’s company WWI, but had to convert it into a lease agreement following strong objections from several board members from Film City. Under this new agreement, Ghai was required to pay Rs 28 lakhs a year as “rent” for this prime property, with an increase of 10% every ten years.
Covert has been told by sources within Film City and the State Government that Ghai has failed to pay a single paisa to the authorities, as required by the agreement. “They have violated all norms on paper. They are running the academy, which charges exorbitant fees, as though it is their own private affair. We are not even aware of the profits made since they claim they haven’t made any,” one source said.
The original allottee for the land, PDR Videotronics, claims that this land was given to them in 1974, and has filed a petition in the Bombay High Court challenging the agreement between the State Government and Ghai. The Government had reportedly told PDR Videotronics at the time that a third party could not be allowed to run private institutes in Film City. Later, film director A. Patel filed a petition challenging the agreement, maintaining it was illegal, as no public tender had been issued. Patel died a few months ago and there has not been much movement forward on the PIL as a result.
Sanjay Patil, joint managing director of Film City, politely said that since the matter was pending in court he would not like to comment on it. But sources within his office told Covert that both Film City and the Maharashtra Government are working on a new agreement related to revenue sharing. “Mukta Arts has told us that they have been suffering losses since they began the academy. We have now asked for all their balance sheets and hope to get a new agreement in place where the Government can at least have access to some revenue through rent or otherwise. We are also investigating their fee structure,” the sources said.
Local Shiv Sena MLA Gajanan Kirtikar, who has been asking questions in the State Assembly since 2000 about the agreement and the running of Ghai’s institute, insisted that this “is nothing but corruption at the top level”.
Kirtikar said that many things were wrong with the Whistling Woods agreement: the illegal allotment of land, the expensive fee structure, down to the encroachment of seven acres of land from a garden plot reserved for setting up a memorial for the soldiers who died in the Kargil conflict. He said that even the trees planted at the memorial had been razed in violation of environmental laws. “How can the State Government give away 20 acres of land without inviting tenders? As for the fee structure, no one from the State Government was informed, nor were any suggestions taken on board,” he said.
Reports by the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Public Undertaking Committee appointed by the Vidhan Sabha in 2006-07, raised the issue of corruption and recommended stern action against the director of the company at the time Govind Swarup, by sealing off his property and other assets. But the Deshmukh Government ignored both reports. Swarup has since retired and Patel is no more. “Hence the case has been conveniently forgotten,” said Kirtikar, who raised the issue again in the winter session of the Assembly, after Ashok Chavan took over as Chief Minister. He reiterated the demand for an enquiry into the land deal and the financial status of production units operating out of Film City.
In his written reply, Chavan informed the legislator that the Ghai issue was being investigated. He provided a 32-page report of 850 production houses that had not paid their dues, with the total amount running to Rs 5 crores. “Under investigation” is a standard response by the Government to tricky Assembly questions.
“We have now filed an application under the Right to Information Act against Whistling Woods and we hope to get some concrete response by end April,” Kirtikar said. Chief Minister Chavan was the Minister of Culture in the Deshmukh Government and party to the Film City-Whistling Woods deal.
Film City, the hub of the Indian film industry, has played a pivotal role in producing box office hits. One of the landmarks in the history of Indian cinema was Raja Harish Chandra, produced by Dada Saheb Phalke, whom this vast expanse of 513 acres is named after. Apart from Whistling Woods, other well-known names that have been allotted land in Film City are Adlabs [10 acres], Bombay Natural History Society [30 acres] and Amir Park [25 acres]. Incidentally, in addition to WWI, all these tenants are defaulters and have yet to pay their dues to Film City and the Maharashtra Government.
The land occupied now by the film academy earlier belonged to adivasis whose villages, called padas, were razed to the ground to make way for the complex. Several left, but some still remain, refusing to give up what they claim is rightfully theirs. They earn their livelihood from selling firewood and vegetable farming, and point out that since the film academy came up they have been facing major difficulties.
“We are not allowed to farm on the very fields we have owned for generations, and we are not permitted to pick firewood. It has become very difficult to make ends meets,” said Suman Kisan Bhagat, who claims that 40 gunthas of land were forcibly taken away from her without any form of compensation. She has tears in her eyes as she speaks to this correspondent, sitting amidst a small cluster of huts in Devipada, where the Warli adivasis now live.
“We even went to jail for this, 23 women and seven men with our children. We had gone to protest and Ghai sent the police to stop us,” she said. Anusaya Laxman Gavit is in complete agreement. Pointing to a huge gaping hole in the thick concrete wall she said, “Why should we be forced to move out of here? It is because of us adivasis that jungles like these survive.” The pada is spotless and several students from the academy visit the hutments to shoot village scenes.
Parvati Motiram Khandori said that Ghai has been calling her to come in for a “settlement meeting”, but is not keen on meeting her two educated sons. “I am illiterate and have no idea why he wants to meet me,” she said, showing yellowed rent receipts that date as far back as 1959.
Dinesh Yeswant believes it would help if they were all given employment, as with their main source of income gone they had little to do but sit around the entire day, waiting for stray jobs to come their way.
Subhash Ghai was unavailable for comment but the CEO of Whistling Woods, Ravi Gupta, rubbished reports of displacing adivasis. “There are always encroachments in the form of hutments and we were told these huts would soon be relocated under the SRA scheme. There are a few hutments within our campus, but they cannot be called a village,” he said, adding that the matter was in court. “Frankly, there is not much merit in the case. Anybody can file a PIL in this country and just because someone did against us it does not mean that we are in the wrong. There are always certain vested interests working,” he said. Gupta added that the land still belonged to Film City and had not been given to them. “It is still with the Government under the agreement,” he said.
Gupta clarified that under the agreement Mukta Arts holds an 85% stake in the joint venture, whereas the State Government has a 15% share. The company has invested Rs 70 crores since the project began, but not only is turning a profit far away, the company has been suffering major losses ever since the academy has started functioning formally three years ago. “With such a high level of investment, it does take time for any set-up like ours, with high costs and infrastructure, to settle down. We have around 300 students whom we charge Rs 5 lakhs each as admission fees for two years and this also includes the cost of making three films of their own. However, in any Government institute like the Film and Technical Institute of India or even the Indian Institute of Technology, fees are usually less than Rs 50,000 and the Government ends up spending almost Rs 9 lakhs on each student — which is of course the taxpayers’ money,” Gupta said.
The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, now thoroughly bored with its agitation against North Indians, has moved to new pastures and is busy making inroads into the film industry. They have targeted Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods, claiming that a scam estimated to be over Rs 200 crores was instrumental in the institute’s creation. Just last month, MNS founded a Film Workers’ Union “to tackle the injustice meted out to film labourers in Film City”. The group claimed that if land could be given to Ghai, it should also be given to the workers.
The twist in the tale is that while Raj Thackeray’s wife Shalini is the general secretary of the workers’ union, Smita Thackeray is one of the members on the national advisory panel of Whistling Woods