BENGALURU: The Justice HS Kempanna Commission which inquired into the alleged illegal land denotification by chief minister Siddaramaiah at Arkavathy layout here submitted its report to Karnataka chief secretary Subhash Chandra Khuntia. CM Siddaramaiah has been given a clean chit, say sources.
According to sources, the report attributed alleged irregularities to lapses on part of some officials of the middle and lower rungs of the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) and Urban Development Department.
Justice Kempanna, who submitted the 1,861-page report said, "I have completed my task after studying all aspects of the complaints received about the alleged irregularities in development of the Arkavathy layout. Now it is up to the government to decide the future course of action."
The Commission was constituted in August 2014, after BJP raised a storm over the issue in both the houses of state legislature alleging that chief minister Siddaramaiah was a direct beneficiary of the 541-acre land denotification. The party had sought a CBI inquiry to probe into the alleged irregularities.
Denotification is a process of dropping some pockets of land from acquisition for development projects after issuing the preliminary notification for acquisition.
However, Siddaramaiah refused to hand over the investigation to the CBI and announced a judicial probe headed by a retired judge. Siddaramaiah had said that the denotification of 541 acres was in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Karnataka High Court.
The panel, in fact, probed whether orders of courts were violated during the denotification of 983 acres of land since February 2004.