The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday dismissed three petitions, of which two were public interest litigations (PILs) and imposed Rs 75,0000 fine for wasting its time.
A Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice D H Waghela and Justice B V Nagaratha, dismissed the PILs and a private petition.
Land War
One B D Hiremutt filed a PIL challenging the government order allotting two acres of KIADB land near Circuit Bench in Dharwad to the Sponge Iron factory. He stated that this land was reserved for small-scale industries, but it was allotted to a big industry without permission from the KSPCB. The Bench dismissed the petition after the counsel representing thegovernment submitted that they had the KSPCB permission.
The bench directed the petitioner to pay `40,000 as fine and give the amount to state Law Service Authority for wasting the court’s time.
Irregularities
In another PIL, M Gopinath of Mysore, alleged that there are irregularities of Rs 100 crore in the process of acquiring land for the creation of layouts by the Karnataka Housing Board (KHB) when G T Deve Gowda was its Chairman. He sought a CBI inquiry into the case.
The bench directed him to pay a fine of Rs 10,000 and dismissed the petition. It observed that the petition was regarding the losses suffered by farmers, but no farmer came before the court.
According to the court, he had not given representation to the competent authority before approaching the court, but came directly to the court.
Encroachment
In another case, one Shankarappa Gowda challenged a single bench order, which had directed to acquire eight acres of forest land, which he had encroached.
The counsel representing the government submitted that Gowda had encroached the forest land and cut 273 trees. He used the land for agriculture, the cousel said.
Despite vacating the land, he sought for a stay on the single bench order. There are 80 more acres of forest land acquired by other people in the same place.
The bench dismissed the appeal and imposed a fine of `25,000 on him. It further directed the government to evict other people who had acquired the 80 acres of land. Dismissing all petitions, Chief Justice Waghela asked advocates not to file or represent petitions, which do not have public interest and waste the court’s time.