BSY tells HC: Cong govt denotified 1,300 acres to help party MLA

BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa on Wednesday told the High Court of Karnataka that the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government has denotified 1,300 acres during the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.

He said that the government had dropped the land acquisition to facilitate the Congress MLA from KR Puram constituency in Bengaluru, Byrathi Basavaraj, who is also a member of Bangalore Development Authority (BDA).

Senior counsel C V Nagesh, appearing for Yeddyurappa, informed the court that the present government, which has denotified 1,300 acres, is making a hue and cry about the losses to the state exchequer caused by denotification of 257 acres by the previous government.

Nagesh said that since the BDA had not issued the final notification of the land acquired to form Dr Shivaram Karanth Layout in north Bengaluru during Yeddyurappa’s tenure as chief minister, there was nothing wrong in dropping the land that was already acquired. Nagesh contended that present government failed to issue final notification, which amounts to denotifying the land.

He said the allegation that Asha Paradeshi, one of the land owners is a fictitious name created to enable the procedure of denotification of land is  ‘false.’ The land owner had approached the court previously and had got an order in her favour. He said that there was no conspiracy in creating land owners and letters to enable the denotification process.

The counsel was making his submission in a petition filed by Yeddyurappa, who has moved the court seeking directions to quash two FIRs registered by the Anti Corruption Bureau and the proceedings against him. The two FIRs were registered against the former chief minister in the case of ‘fake-denotification’ of 257 acres of land of which 3.6 acres were kept to form Dr Shivaram Karanth Layout. Justice Kumar adjourned the hearing to Thursday.