BENGALURU: Former minister and senior Congress leader HK Patil, who had severely criticized the government over its decision to sell 3,667 acres of government land to Jindal-owned steel company JSW Steel Ltd, visited the Congress office on Saturday, much to the surprise of his partymen. He participated in a meeting with KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao and industries minister KJ George. Patil had strongly opposed the deal and thus embarrased the state government.
After emerging from the meeting with George, he said they had shared their points of view. He said on Sunday they would take the issue before Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, who will take a final call on the issue.
Patil had challenged the deal on four issues. The first one being the sale price of Rs 1.22 lakh, which he said was ridiculous because the market price of the land was about Rs 1.5 lakh per acre. The second issue he pointed out was that Jindal owed the government Rs 2,000 crore. The third was that they were accused in a Lokayukta report and the fourth being that the Law Department had not taken these serious issues into consideration.
Patil told The New Sunday Express that these are serious issues that need to be looked into. “As per Chapter 23 of the report filed by Lokayukta Santosh Hegde, the company was involved in illegal mining of ore, which is a serious criminal offence considering it was a theft of ore,” he said.