Gowda, Krishna, BSY face probe in Nice case

Lokayukta attaches 2-year toll amount

The Special Lokayukta Court on Thursday passed an order attaching the toll collected by the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (Nice) for the past two years.

Delivering orders on a private complaint filed by social activist T J Abraham on the irregularities in the implementation of the Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Project (BMIP), Judge N K Sudhindra Rao ordered a probe into the complaint against former prime minister H D Deve Gowda,  Nice Managing Director Ashok Kheny, Director Baba Kalyani and Congress leaders D K Shivakumar and R V Deshpande. Former chief ministers  S M Krishna and B S Yeddyurappa’s names also figure in the case.

Ordering that the amount equivalent to toll collection for the preceding two years (October 25, 2012 to Thursday) in all the toll centres be attached, the judge also directed the Lokayukta police to seek the assistance of the government agency including the jurisdictional police to assess and calculate the number of vehicles plying daily to ascertain the proper quantity of the toll amount.

The court also directed the Lokayukta Additional Director General of Police to conduct an investigation under Section 156 (3) of Code of Criminal Procedure. The ADGP has also been directed to form an investigation team constituting not less than four DSPs.  Out of 105 people named in the complaint as accused, the judge has retained the names of only 30. In additional orders, the judge also directed attachment of 259 acres of property, which were handed over to two builders, Ajmera Builders (250 acres) and Umang Developers (9 acres) by Nandi Economic Corridor Enterprise Limited (NECEL), which was actually acquired for the purpose of developing a Peripheral Road and Link Road.

It is not clear how this property will be attached as there is no description of the actual location of the land that has been handed over to the two builders. Further, the complainant Abraham has been directed to issue a public notice to everybody affected by the project and also collect information.

The case

Abraham in his complaint spanning eight chapters and more than 3,000 pages submitted that the State under Deve Gowda as the chief minister entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with a consortium formed by Ashok Kheny and Baba Kalyani among others for the construction of a highway from Bangalore to Mysore in 1995, without ever ascertaining their financial capability.

Abraham said the government agreed to facilitate land acquisition from private land owners and also entered into a lease agreement for 1,913 acres of its own land at the rate of Rs 10/acre per annum for a period of 30 years.

Abraham alleged that the consortium was unable to pay Rs 10 crore to the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) and promptly mortgaged the government land for Rs 150 crore with the ICICI bank. He said the primary objective of the whole project was to merely grab land in and around Bangalore.

Under the original agreement, the total land that was required for the Peripheral Road and the expressway to Mysore was 20,193 acres. But the state set up the Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Area Planning Authority (BMICAPA) and installed Ashok Kheny on the board, even though he had no right to be there. “He along with D K Shivakumar then decided that the total land that had to be acquired for the project was 1.75 lakh acres,” Abraham had submitted.

Abraham submitted that during the tenure of S M Krishna as chief minister, the then Additional Chief Secretary, PWD stated that if Nice was exempted from the payment of stamp duty of Rs 56 crore on the first sale of land to the company at townships, the government would stand to benefit subsequently by way of the second sale of lands in the townships.

“This was a fraudulent excuse used deliberately to cause a specific loss of Rs 56 crore to the state exchequer. No builder or land developer has been extended or given this kind of a benefit in the state till date for the development of a township for private financial aggrandisement,” Abraham alleged.