Karnataka Governor seeks Kempanna panel report on Arkavathy Layout scam

Bengaluru: Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot has asked the government to give him a copy of the Justice H S Kempanna Commission's report on the Arkavathy Layout scam in which Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was accused of denotifying land during his first term.

According to sources, Gehlot has written to Chief Secretary Shalini Rajneesh seeking a copy of the report and other related information.

This comes just days after the ruling Congress raked up an old denotification case when H D Kumaraswamy and B S Yediyurappa were chief ministers.

It is said that the urban development department has sent the file to Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, the Bengaluru City Development minister, since the matter pertains to a layout in the city.

Last month, BJP MLC C T Ravi had written to Gehlot asking him to get Siddaramaiah to make Justice Kempanna's report public.

The Justice Kempanna Commission was constituted in 2014 when Siddaramaiah was the chief minister following allegations against him. The Commission's report was submitted in 2017 -- Siddaramaiah was still in office then -- but it was not made public.

The closest the report came to becoming public was in February 2023 when the then Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai quoted excerpts in the Assembly to say 868 acres were excluded from acquisition in violation of court orders to favour owners and persons interested in the lands. "The way in which various recommendatory reports and orders of BDA's land acquisition officers came to be generated and the manner in which they came to be considered by the men at the helm of affairs has turned the entire scheme into scam," Bommai quoted from the report.

Bommai claimed that the Akravathy Layout scam caused a loss of Rs 8,000 crore to the government.

Siddaramaiah, the then leader of the opposition who was not present in the Assembly when Bommai read from the report, claimed that the Commission had exonerated him of denotification charges.

With Gehlot seeking a copy of Justice Kempanna's report, the Opposition JD(S) sought Siddaramaiah's resignation. In a tweet, the JD(S) claimed that 541 acres of land were illegally denotified. "Isn't it a black mark on the corrupt Congress government for the Governor to have sought a report of Justice Kempanna Commission's report? Siddaramaiah, who is already facing prosecution in the MUDA case, should first resign before preaching morality," the JD(S) said.