Did nothing wrong, ready for CID probe, says chief minister

Rebutting the charges levelled by the Opposition BJP that he illegally denotified 541 acres of land in the Arkavathy Layout, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah asserted on Friday that the denotification was “strictly as per” the High Court guidelines and there was “nothing illegal” about it. He is ready to order an enquiry by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) into the matter, he said.

“My government has not denotified a single gunta of land so far and will not do so in the future. But as far as the denotification of 541 acres of BDA land is concerned, the High Court of Karnataka had directed the government to do it.

The court even warned of contempt proceedings if this was not done in a week. We had no option but to denotify the land,” he stated in the Assembly in reply to Leader of Opposition Jagadish Shettar’s allegation of large-scale corruption in the denotification.

The chief minister said he would not hesitate to take strict action if any specific violation of the court’s guidelines was brought to his notice.

If the Opposition still thinks the denotification was illegal, the government would not mind a CID investigation, he said, rejecting the demand for a CBI enquiry.

Nonetheless, conducting a probe will only delay the layout’s formation, he maintained.

Siddaramaiah, who was in a combative mood, used the opportunity to embarrass the BJP by repeatedly referring to denotification of 198 acres of BDA land meant forArkavathy Layout between 2007 and 2010 when B S Yeddyurappa was chief minister.

He provided all the details of denotification in the jinxed layout since 2003.

As senior BJP and Congress members haggled over interpretation of the court order, the House resembled a court hall.

Siddaramaiah tried to turn the tables on Shettar saying that the BDA had passed the resolution to denotify 541 acres of land and recommended the same to the government

in January 2013 when the latter was chief minister. But Shettar shot back saying that he had rejected the recommendation and that the BDA recommendation was not binding on the government.

Siddaramaiah further said that Shettar, being the chief minister, was aware of the BDA passing the resolutions in 2013 but did nothing to stop the agency from do so.

The decision to appoint Land Acquisition Officers of the BDA to identify and make recommendations on denotification was taken by the previous BJP government, he claimed.