The Karnataka State Contractors' Association president D Kempanna and four other office-bearers were arrested on Saturday, December 24, in connection with a criminal defamation case field by Minister Munirathna, police said. Kempanna and the association have alleged that ministers in Karnataka demand a 40% commission in contracts awarded by the state government. Vaiyalikawal police detained Kempanna and the others on Saturday, after a court issued a non-bailable arrest warrant for not appearing before the court in connection with a criminal defamation case filed by state Minister of Horticulture, Planning, Programme Monitoring and Statistics Munirathna.
Along with Karnataka State Contractors' Association president Kempanna, vice-presidents of the association R Ambikapathy and V Krishna Reddy, association treasurer HS Nataraj, and the organising secretary BS Gurusiddappa were arrested by the police, The Hindu reported. The five of them were arrested and produced before the magistrate at his residence, who granted them bail. They were reportedly released around midnight.
Kempanna had caused a storm a few months ago when he accused some ministers of demanding 40% commission on public works in the state. This gave the opposition parties ammunition against the ruling BJP in poll-bound Karnataka. The association has been alleging that ministers, MLAs and officials have been asking for 40% of a project’s cost as bribe after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2019.
Munirathna had sent the association members a 50-crore defamation notice in September. The association had accused Munirathna of threatening officials to collect commissions. Kempanna had alleged that the minister, who is also the minister in-charge of Kolar district, had threatened to suspend the executive engineer if money is not collected and given. “He is asking officials to collect and get the money. The Minister also has threatened to check the three-year-old work with machinery, when no payment has been done for the work for the last three years. He himself has got work done in RR Nagar (his constituency) for Rs 10,000 crore in two terms. What improvement has RR Nagar made?” Kempanna had asked while briefing the media in August. Munirathna had then dismissed the allegation, warning of taking action against the association for defaming him.
In April this year, a civil contractor named Santhosh Patil who accused Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Minister KS Eshwarappa of demanding a 40% commission in a road-laying project, was later found dead in a lodge in Udupi. A day before his death, he had purportedly sent a WhatsApp message to his friend saying that Eshwarappa was the “sole cause” for his death.
(With PTI inputs)