The Karnataka High Court on Friday ordered issue of a notice to the State government and also to senior IAS officer M. Lakshminarayana on a PIL petition. The petition questions the decision of the Additional Chief Secretary (Urban Development Department) on a representation seeking permission for prosecuting Mr. Lakshminarayana in connection ‘illegal’ grant of licence to an eatery in Koramangala when he was the commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Subhro Kamal Mukherjee and Justice P.S. Dinesh Kumar passed the order on the petition filed by Namma Bengaluru Foundation, which had questioned the September 29, 2016 decision of the Additional Chief Secretary (UDD), who was asked by the High Court to examine the petitioner’s plea, made in an earlier PIL, for grant of sanction for prosecution.
The Additional Chief Secretary had said that he was not the competent person to examine the plea while finding nothing wrong in the role of Mr. Lakshminarayana in grant of sanction in December 2014.
