'Siddaramaiah denotified Arkavathy land for party fund'

Illegal denotification reared its ugly head again as the Opposition BJP alleged in the Assembly on Friday that the Siddaramaiah government had denotified 541 acres of valuable land meant for Bangalore Development Authority’s Arkavathy layout.

Leader of the Opposition Jagadish Shettar alleged that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had given the green signal for issuing denotification letter dated June 18, 2014, despite knowing that it was in violation of guidelines laid down by the Karnataka High Court for dropping land acquisition.

“The land has been denotified in the name of re-modification of the layout project and on the pretext of implementing a court order,” he alleged.

“The file (recommending denotification of land) had come to me when I was the chief minister in 2013. But I rejected it as it was against the guidelines. The denotification was done by this government in order to raise funds for the recent parliamentary elections,” he charged, triggering an uproar by Congress members.

The House witnessed a pandemonium as the BJP and the Congress members led by Shettar and Siddaramaiah, respectively, traded charges and indulged in heated arguments.

Shettar had come armed with documents and satellite imagery of the location of the proposed layout.

However, Siddaramaiah defended himself sayi­ng that the denotification was done as per the court’s direction.