The Special Court for Elected Representatives in Bengaluru on Thursday issued summons to former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy to appear for questioning in the alleged illegal denotification case. In 2007, when Kumaraswamy was serving as the Chief Minister of Karnataka, a complaint was filed with the Lokayukta that he illegally denotified land in Banashankari’s Halage Vaderahalli. The court has summoned Kumaraswamy for questioning on October 4.
On July 20 this year, special judge Ramachandra D Huddar had rejected the Lokayukta’s B Report (closure report) in the case, where it had cited lack of evidence. The court had also directed the complainant in the case to record his statement in court.
In October 2007, M Mahadeva Swamy from Santhemarahalli in Karnataka’s Chamarajanagar district had filed a complaint with the Lokayukta that Kumaraswamy had passed an order to denotify 2.24 acres of land listed under survey numbers 128 and 137 at Halage Vaderahalli in Bengaluru in favour of a few people, who in turn, sold the land to builders.
The complaint alleged that Kumaraswamy had approved the denotification of this land on October 1 in 2007, just a week before he resigned from his post as Chief Minister. Mahadeva Swamy had stated that the land in question was later acquired by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) to construct residential sites for which a preliminary notification was issued in April 1989 and the final one in 1997. Mahadeva Swamy alleged that Kumaraswamy’s denotification orders had resulted in a loss of Rs 56.6 crore to the state exchequer.
Mahadeva Swamy alleged that the documents submitted by the BDA, showed that the land was sold to third parties on the same day Kumaraswamy denotified the land. He also accused Kumaraswamy of deliberately forgoing the Urban Development Department’s adverse opinion regarding denotification. In 2012, the Lokayukta police registered an FIR against Kumaraswamy and filed a B report in July this year. Special judge Huddar had rejected the B report stating that the list of sections mentioned in the FIR were too serious.
A case had been registered against KUmaraswamy under sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 483 (counterfeiting a property mark), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using forged documents) of the IPC; and sections 13(1)(c) (fraudulently misappropriating government property), 13(1)(d) (obtains for himself or for any other person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage by corrupt means), 13(1)(e) (disproportionate income during tenure as public servant) and 13(2) criminal misconduct of public servant) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.