3 top IAS officers in trouble for disobeying HC orders

Three top IAS officers are in serious trouble for disobeying the high court’s orders on allotting two sites to a couple whose land was acquired by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) for a public project in 1977-78.

On Monday, a division bench headed by Justice Raghvendra S Chauhan stated it would frame charges against Rakesh Singh, Commissioner, BDA; Mahendra Jain, Principal Secretary, Urban Development Department; and Rajkumar Khatri, Principal Secretary, Revenue Department. The court also ordered them to personally appear before it on September 5.

S N Narasimha Murthy and his wife Sudha, of Judicial Layout in northern Bengaluru, filed a contempt petition in February 2018 stating that the authorities failed to give them two 50x40’ sites even two years after the court’s orders. On July 20, 2016, the court had ordered that the sites
should be given within five months. The orders were passed on the couple’s writ petition.

The court noted that the officers had clearly failed to obey its orders even after being given several chances.