The Karnataka cabinet on Thursday resolved to advise governor Thawar Chand Gehlot to withdraw the show cause notice served to chief minister Siddaramaiah over the alleged MUDA scam and dismiss the complaint filed against him by an RTI activist.
Siddaramaiah held a breakfast meeting with his cabinet colleagues but did not chair the subsequent cabinet meeting since the matter related to him personally. Instead, deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar chaired the meeting.
“We are confident that governor is sensible and will make a calm and calculated move on this issue. He is a wise man and we hope he will abide by the advice of the council of ministers,” Shivakumar said.
Second-time Congress CM Siddaramaiah faces serious allegations and is under fire from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal (Secular) over a land deal involving Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) and his wife, and the alleged siphoning of Rs 89.73 crore from the state’s Valmiki Development Corporation, which was allocated for the welfare of Scheduled Tribes in Karnataka.
The governor’s action follows a complaint by social activist TJ Abraham, seeking the prosecution of the CM under various provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita. The allegation against Siddaramaiah is that his wife was allotted 14 sites in the Vijayanagar area of Mysuru city in lieu of 3.16 acres of land that had been unauthorisedly acquired by the Mysuru Urban Development Authority. This land was given to Siddaramaiah’s wife, Parvathi, as a gift by her brother, BM Mallikarjuna Swamy, on October 6, 2010.
Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar met with the Congress high command, including party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and MP Rahul Gandhi, to apprise them of the allegations made by the BJP and the JD(S). Siddaramaiah refuted all the allegations, stating that there was nothing illegal in the allotment of sites because MUDA had given 14 sites in a new layout since his wife’s land had been illegally acquired by the authority.
State urban development minister Byrathi Suresh released the names of JD(S) leaders in Mysuru, including union minister HD Kumaraswamy, who had also benefited from a similar scheme applicable to all those whose land had been acquired illegally by MUDA.
The party high command reportedly expressed concern over this issue being exploited at the national level by the BJP. Meanwhile, governor Gehlot left for Delhi and had several meetings with central leaders, after which this show-cause notice was sent to Siddaramaiah.
According to Congress party sources, Siddaramaiah has been advised to seek the best possible legal counsel to counter the “machinations” of the BJP-led central government. Congress party sources also advised Siddaramaiah to “tread extremely carefully” to ensure the Congress government is not brought down.
Complainant TJ Abraham had filed a similar request in 2011 to then Karnataka governor Hansraj Bhardwaj against then BJP chief minister BS Yediyurappa on charges of denotification of land for the benefit of his family and misusing the CM’s office. Yediyurappa was forced to resign as chief minister after a Lokayukta report alleged that he and his sons sold one acre of government land near Bengaluru to JSW Steel for Rs 20 crore. The case was handed over to the CBI, which prosecuted Yediyurappa and sent him to jail, while his sons were acquitted.
Governor Bhardwaj approved the prosecution of Yediyurappa by the Karnataka Lokayukta under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, for his role in the illegal iron ore mining activities in the state.
Bhardwaj’s decision had a precedent in Tamil Nadu. In 1995, N Chenna Reddy, then governor of Tamil Nadu, sanctioned the prosecution of chief minister J Jayalalithaa for corruption offences under Section 169 of the IPC and Section 13(1)(d)(e) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. This case was initiated by Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy.
Similarly, a precedent exists with Lalu Prasad Yadav. In July 1997, Bihar governor AR Kidwai sanctioned the prosecution of Lalu Prasad in the fodder scam. The governor delayed acceding to a CBI request for over two months to ensure there was strong evidence before granting the sanction.
Former Maharashtra chief minister AR Antulay also faced corruption charges, accused of distributing ad hoc cement quotas, granting liquor licences, and issuing NOCs for transactions that leased government premises for cash. Although Antulay resigned amid a significant outcry, the governor delayed granting permission for prosecution and issued it several months later. The Supreme Court upheld the Maharashtra governor’s decision to permit the prosecution of the former chief minister.
Land scams have plagued Karnataka chief ministers for decades. Past Congress chief ministers like Dharam Singh and SM Krishna were also accused of allocating housing sites in Bengaluru to friends and family and faced sanctions.
In the 1980s, then CM Ramakrishna Hegde was accused of acquiring prime property in Bengaluru through a private real estate firm called Revajeetu Builders for personal gain.
Present union minister and JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy, also a former Karnataka chief minister, still faces allegations of illegally acquiring nearly 40 acres of government land in Bidadi, despite his claims that part of it was gifted by an aunt before he entered politics.
His father, former Prime Minister and Karnataka chief minister HD Deve Gowda, also faced accusations of distributing 32 housing sites to friends and family in Mysuru in 1984 when he was a minister in the Ramakrishna Hegde government. This accusation resurfaced during the controversy surrounding Siddaramaiah.
Congress general secretaries KC Venugopal and Randeep Surjewala were rushed to Bengaluru to supervise the developing crisis and advise the team on how to manage the situation while keeping their government intact.