Karnataka is expected to be rocked by a fresh wave of political allegations, in the days to come, over what has been described as a land denotification scam. This is expected to be a much worse repeat of what happened in 2011 when the then Chief Minister, B.S. Yeddyurappa, was put in the dock.
The actors in the present instance are expected to stand out, in that, those who played with the prosecutors of the past will now be the defendants, and those who extended support to the defendants at that point of time will be on the side of the prosecution in the present case.
In a way, the Bharatiya Janata Party is out to derive political mileage, which will hold it in good stead in the next round of elections to the Legislative Assembly, and so are some Congress leaders, who are stated to be willing to provide some indirect support apparently to floor the government.
There are many leaders in the Congress, who are against the party government.
The office of the Governor is also expected to figure in the case similar to what happened three years ago, given the indications that the complaint is likely to be made over to the head of the State. While the former Congress senior, H.R. Bhardwaj was the Governor in 2011, the incumbent is Governor Vajubhai Rudabhai Vala, a former Speaker of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly and a veteran BJP leader, who has just completed about 100 days in office. This case did not figure in the present session of the State legislature given the fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party, the principal Opposition in the State legislature, is still in the process of collating the requisite documents to nail the government, and in particular, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
Arkavathi LayoutThe acquisition of lands for the Arkavathi Layout of the Bangalore Development Authority has been in the eye of a storm ever since the project was promoted in 2003 by the S.M. Krishna government. Some of the BJP leaders told The Hindu that the Congress government has outsmarted its predecessor governments in denotifying prime lands acquired for the Arkavathi Layout on the garb of abiding by an order of the Supreme Court. “We are keen to take this matter to the logical end and expose the misdeeds of the government.”
The Siddaramaiah government, on the basis of a recommendation of the board of the Bangalore Development Authority, approved a re-modified scheme for the Arkavathi Layout thus denotifying a large chunk of prime land. A similar recommendation was made by the board of the BDA, nearly two years ago, when Jagadish Shettar was the CM, and the matter was put on hold. The then government had also brought forth a rule that any denotification of acquired land should be based only on the recommendations of a high-power committee, headed by the Chief Secretary to the State government. The charge is that this process too has been circumvented in the present instance.
