Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has 43 complaints against him pending before the Karnataka Lokayukta, all at various stages of scrutiny.
This was revealed by the Lokayukta office in its response to a Right to Information query. Most of the complaints pertain to the Arkavathy Layout denotification case and the luxury watch controversy.
According to the reply, a total of 56 complaints have been lodged against Siddaramaiah since he became Chief Minister in 2013. Of these, 13 have been closed after inquiry as they were not substantiated by facts. One of the cases couldn’t be made out.
The information was sought by activist Ramamurthy Gowda, who himself is the complainant in 13 cases. The reply showed that 22 complaints, some of which date back to 2015, were still in the stage of preliminary scrutiny.
Interestingly, one person named Siddalinge Gowda had lodged 31 of the complaints. Many complaints are stuck at the departments concerned as they have not responded to the Lokayukta demand for an opinion report.
Mr. Gowda said the Lokayukta must speed up probe into all the complaints and take action in order to preserve its credibility. Lokayukta P. Vishwanatha Shetty was not available for comment.