A City Sessions and Civil Court in Bengaluru has directed former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda to pay Rs 2 crore as damages to the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises (NICE), for his “defamatory statement” against the company in a television interview in 2011 where he had called the NICE Bengaluru-Mysuru Infrastructure Corridor project ‘a loot’. NICE had filed a suit against the statements made by Deve Gowda in his interview to a Kannada channel 10 years ago.
The complaint was filed by the NICE, whose Managing Director and promoter is former Bidar MLA from the Congress party Ashok Kheny. In Gowda’s interview telecasted by a Kannada news channel titled “Gowdra Garjane” on June 28, 2011, the member of Rajya Sabha hit out against a project NICE undertook. The court also issued a permanent injunction against the JD(S) leader from making any defamatory comment against NICE. “The defendant is permanently restrained from making any defamatory statements against the plaintiff Company in any media, news channel, TV channel or in any other means of mass communication in future,” observed the court.
The NICE is the proprietor of the NICE Bengaluru-Mysuru Infrastructure Corridor, a private tolled expressway connecting the two cities. The project had courted controversy when it was first developed, as several farmers and their families were displaced during its construction and their land acquired by the NICE. The JD(S), helmed by Deve Gowda, had heavily opposed the project and sided with the farmers. The sessions court ruled that Deve Gowda implied that the NICE had used “conspiracy and corruption” to its advantage and, along with some government officials, “cheated the poor farmers' ' in the TV interview.
NICE was constructing the expressway on the Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) basis, which involves remote sensor imaging and mapping, thus expediting the process of construction. In its June 17 order, the sessions court noted that the road construction project undertaken by the NICE served a larger interest of Karnataka. “The project undertaken by the plaintiff Company is a massive project – which is in the larger interest of the State of Karnataka. Hence, if defamatory statements are allowed to be made in future, the implementation of such a massive project like the present one which is undertaken in the larger public interest of the State of Karnataka is going to be delayed,” the court noted.