The Karnataka High Court has upheld the denotification of 36 guntas of land in Bengaluru South, calling the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board’s (KIADB) acquisition “daylight dacoity of lands of the poor farmers by state authorities in favour of land sharks.”
A division bench of Justices DK Singh and Tara Vitasta Ganju made these observations in a 22-year-old case in which 36 guntas of land in Devarabeesanahalli was acquired and given to a firm which claimed to be in the software industry but turned out to be a gutka manufacturer.
“On the said application, the entire state machinery was put into high speech motion to acquire the land for such an applicant. The real purpose of the land acquisition for the said company was not the industrial development in the state but to put the valuable assets for a meagre amount in their hands to develop the real estate for residential and commercial purposes,” the division bench said.
The bench was hearing a case filed by landowner Patel Jetalal Ramaji, who had bought the 36 guntas of land in survey numbers 10/2 and 10/23 in Devarabeesanahalli and Kariyammana Agrahara, Bengaluru South, in January 2000.
After issuing a preliminary notification in 2001, the KIADB acquired the land in 2004 to set up a software park. The government denotified the land in May 2009 after it came to light that the companies allotted land had nothing to do with software-related work.
However, Royal Fragrances Private Limited approached the high court, and a single bench quashed the denotification in 2013. After this, the landowners filed another plea, which came up before the division bench.
The division bench referred to a 2004 report by the Chief Executive Officer of the KIADB to the Principal Secretary, Department of Commerce and Industries, which said that there was no evidence that the five companies were running software-related businesses. Three of these companies were represented by the same set of directors, and one of the companies, Royal Fragrances Private Limited (RFPL), was a gutka-manufacturing company.
RFPL had applied to the State Level Single Window Agency in 2001, seeking 12 acres of land to set up an IT Park. The company did not have any background in the software industry, and its application was largely unfilled, and columns about company details were left largely blank. Yet, shockingly, the company’s application was not only approved in 18 days, but the company was also given 29 acres, which was more land than it actually applied for.
The bench also observed that the state had eminent domain in order to acquire private property for public use and purposes. “The state cannot acquire the property of private people to create the wealth in an illegal, arbitrary and mala fide manner in favour of private individuals without there being any public purpose,” the bench said.