BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court quashed the order passed by the Bengaluru Rural District Court in 2015, by which it had set aside an auction of agricultural land owned by a private individual, in favour of a trustee of Ved Vignan Maha Vidya Peeth, a public charitable trust.
The First Additional District Judge, Bengaluru Rural, on September 28, 2015, had set aside an auction of the land, measuring 5 acres, 20 guns, in favour of R Raghu, trustee of Ved Vignan Maha Vidya Peeth. The Trust was founded by Sri Ravishankar Guruji of the Art of Living.
The auction was conducted through the civil court on behalf of the Karnataka State Finance Corporation (KSFC) for recovery of Rs 2.61 crore from the owner of the agricultural land, GM Krishna, who had borrowed a loan from KSFC and become a defaulter. In 2000, KSFC initiated recovery proceedings. Raghu, the sole bidder, had offered Rs 15.05 lakh as the bid. However, at the court’s intervention, the bid was enhanced by a sum of Rs 3 lakh and sold to him. Krishna had questioned the outcome of the auction before the civil court and high court, and finally, the apex court too had upheld the auction in 2007.
In 2014, Krishna filed the suit alleging that the “actual auction purchaser” was not Raghu but the Trust, and it was a fraud played by him on the court. It was also alleged in the suit that Raghu was propped up to purchase agricultural land by the Trust to avoid Section 80 of the Karnataka Land Reforms (KLR) Act, which prohibits non-agriculturists from buying agricultural land.
The district court had quashed the auction by allowing this suit. However, Raghu, in his petition before the HC, had contended that the district court had passed the order without evidence, and merely based on surmises and conjectures. Raghu had contended that he had participated and purchased land in the auction as a trustee of the Trust.
Justice R Nataraj, in his August 17, 2023 order, partly allowed Raghu’s petition and quashed the district court’s order, cancelling the auction sale in favour of the petitioner.
However, the high court found that in the earlier round of litigations, including confirming the auction purchase in favour of Raghu, none of the courts had gone into the issue of whether the petitioner was the frontman of the Trust. Also, the high court found inconsistency in Raghu’s statement before various courts, on whether he had purchased the land in the auction or the Trust had.
Though the high court said the Trust propped up the petitioner to purchase the land to overcome Section 80 of the KLR Act, the issue has now become only academic as the bar imposed under Section 80 was deleted by way of an amendment in 2020, and removed with retrospective effect from March 1, 1974.