BENGALURU: Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy’s threat to corner former Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa in the Shivaram Karanth Layout land denotification case drew immediate retaliation from BJP on Thursday as the latter threatened to dig deep into the alleged land grab and mining-related irregularities of the former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda’s family. “In fact, Deve Gowda and his sons deserve a Ph.D in land grab,” BJP leaders taunted.
Launching a scathing counter against Kumaraswamy, deputy leader of opposition the in legislative assembly Govind Karjol, senior BJP leaders R Ashok, B J Puttaswamy and N Ravikumar accused Kumaraswamy of trying to attack BJP leaders with false charges to save his crumbling coalition government.
The Gowda’s family has perfected the art of grabbing government land by getting it first allotted to the landless poor families and then getting it transferred to their own family members including Deve Gowda, his wife Chennamma, and grandson Prajwal Revanna, Puttaswamy charged.
The latest in the series of such land grab is 82.01 acres of land, which has been transferred to Prajwal Revanna in Holenarasipur taluk of Hassan district. The family had used the same tactic to take ownership of 46 acres of land belonging to SC/ST community families at Kethaganahallli village in Ramanagaram district, Puttaswamy alleged.
They also questioned Kumaraswamy’s moral credentials by referring to the Jantakal mining case in which the company’s mining licence in Chitradurga was renewed for 40 years when Kumaraswamy was Chief Minister in an earlier tenure.
“One of the owners of the company, Vinod Goel, was a Mumbai underworld operative and his company was fined Rs 50,000 by the SC for irregularities. The company is facing a case in Pakistan too for supplying poor quality ore to the neighbouring country,” Puttaswamy alleged.