Senior Congress leader K C Kondaiah on Wednesday denied the allegations that he had grabbed the land allotted for construction of Bellary District Congress office. He said the land in question was in fact allotted for the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Trust for social service.
Kondaiah told reporters: “There is no question of grabbing the land allotted for the party office. My image is being tarnished over a piece of 5,070 sq ft land. Some vested interests in the party who cannot tolerate my political growth are indulging in this type of politics.”
The then chief minister S M Krishna had approved the land for the Trust and the Bellary Deputy Commissioner in 2001 had issued orders for giving the said land on lease for the Trust for a period of 30 years.
The Trust comprising former ministers M Y Ghorpade, Allam Veerabhadrappa, M Diwakar Babu, former legislator Siraj Shaik and K C Kondaiah as trustees has listed out objectives, Kondaiah said.
Later, the composition of the Trust was changed as Ghorpade, Allam Veerabhadrappa, Diwakar Babu and Siraj Shaikh did not evince any interest in registering it.
“So, I included my wife K Meenakshi and son K V R Prasad. We registered the Trust with a corpus fund of `1 lakh,” he added.
Kondaiah said the Trust had not received any funds from the government and the work on construction of the Trust building has been expedited due to the notice from the Bellary City Corporation to take back the land, if it was not utilised before September, 2013.
The land would be utilised for social service activities of the Trust only and the government can take back the land if the norms were violated, Kondaiah said.
The former MP said he would reply to the notice issued by KPCC president G Parameshwar with all the documents.