National Committee for Protection of Natural Resources (NCPNR) founder president S R Hiremath on Friday hurled another allegation against Food and Civil Supplies Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao.
This time, the allegations are about irregularities by Varlac Agrotech Private Limited, in which Dinesh was the director.
Hiremath told reporters that the firm established by Dinesh and others had an agreement with an Israeli company to sell flowers. The project failed due to the lack of infrastructure to export flowers at the airport.
The company had taken a loan of `1.9 crore in 1996 from Karnataka State Finance Corporation (KSFC). But, as the company suffered a loss, it failed to repay the loan.
The total outstanding loan of the company as on March 31, 2001, was `4.14 crore, he alleged.
In this regard, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in his report had observed that the promoters of the company had altered the date of collaboration agreement from March 17, 1995, to February 8, 1996, to facilitate sanction of loan.
The company had offered 14 acres of agricultural land as primary security whose value as per the purchase agreement was `1.54 crore. But the value of the land as per the balance sheet was only `98 lakh. Moreover, the property was not in the name of the company, the report said.
The CAG also pointed out that the KSFC sanctioned the loan without assessing the feasibility of the project, Hiremath.
Releasing some more documents pertaining to land grabbing at Bangalore North (additional) taluk, Hiremath named prominent land ‘grabbers’ such as Gundu Rao and family (64 acres and 29 guntas), Prestige Developers (36 acres 5 guntas), Brigadier Arow Lokranjan (16 acres 3 guntas) and late Srikantaiah and children (31 acres 16 guntas).