BENGALURU: A day after Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar announced that the site allotment process for Dr Shivarama Karanth Layout will commence from January 25, the Karnataka High Court on Thursday ordered maintaining the status quo.
The court directed the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) or any wing of the state not to issue the notification inviting applications for allotment of sites until further orders.
On Wednesday, Shivakumar said 10,000 sites will be opened for the public and 9,500 sites earmarked for farmers who surrendered their land for the layout formation.
The court said any further proceedings, except developmental work in the layout, if permitted to continue will prima facie put the rights of those aggrieved into jeopardy.
The court, therefore, deemed it appropriate to order a status quo — effectively meaning that the state cannot issue any notification calling for applications for allotment of sites in the layout without the leave of the court. “The activities of development shall go on, which shall remain subject to the result of the present proceedings,” the court said in the interim order.
A special division bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit and Justice M Nagaprasanna passed the interim order after hearing Advocate General Shashikiran Shetty and the counsels for appellants about the preliminary notification issued in 2008 and the final notification issued in 2018 for the acquisition of land for the formation of the layout and other issues.
The counsel representing appellants/petitioners submitted that their grievances were left unresolved and pointed to several petitions still to be considered about the rights of the parties. The BDA’s counsel submitted that pursuant to the direction of the Supreme Court (SC), the BDA had communicated to the three-member committee, headed by former HC judge Justice A V Chandrashekar, to hand over all documents to be placed before the HC. Despite this, the committee had not handed over the papers or records. The counsel also said the records were under the lock and key of the committee.
The division bench directed that a separate lock be put by the BDA in the presence of the HC Registrar General, in addition to the lock already put by the committee to ensure that the records were not altered, modified or tampered with. The court directed that the exercise be undertaken solely on the score that the committee locked the premises without transmitting the records as per SC directions.
The SC had constituted the three-member committee in 2018 comprising, apart from Justice Chandrashekar, former commissioner of BDA Jayakar Jerome and former DGP S T Ramesh, to oversee aspects of problems arising in the formation of the layout in 2018.
The committee had submitted reports at intermittent intervals, and its tenure ended on December 31, 2023. Justice Chandrashekar recommended to the SC to disband the committee, while Jerome and Ramesh opined continuing the committee for another six months. The SC then transferred the proceedings to the HC, asking to consider extension of the committee, besides its composition. The apex court also asked the aggrieved parties to approach the High Court. Accordingly, the special division bench was constituted by Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court Prasanna B Varale in compliance with the SC order dated December 12, 2023.