The Karnataka Excessive Courtroom on Thursday ordered an interim keep on the Particular Investigation Crew (SIT) inquiry into allegations of land grabbing towards Union minister and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy.
A single-judge bench of Justice ES Indiresh handed the order appearing on a petition filed by the JD(S) chief that requested for the cancellation of the federal government order for the investigation, in addition to a declaration that each one subsequent motion by income authorities can be unlawful. It additionally requested an interim keep on the January 28 authorities order.
The petition has additionally argued that there are particular points with the validity of the investigation, such because the absence of an official notification for the federal government order that instituted the SIT. The SIT has been set as much as examine alleged land encroachment by Kumaraswamy and several other others in Ramanagara district. On account of an absence of paperwork for authentic land grants, the income authorities had recognized sure land as being authorities property, together with 14 acres supposedly owned by the JD(S) chief in Kethiganahalli close to the Bidadi space in Ramanagara.
The matter got here to mild in 2014 when former Mandya MP G Madegowda filed a criticism alleging encroachment on authorities land valued over Rs 130 crore by Kumaraswamy, his aunt, and a former MLA and relative, D C Thamanna.
Based mostly on a 2020 excessive courtroom petition filed by an NGO relating to the problem, the federal government had earlier undertaken to get better the general public land that had been encroached. The federal government knowledgeable the courtroom on January 29 that the five-member SIT, based mostly on the federal government order of the day gone by, would examine six survey numbers in Bidadi hobli. (A hobli is a subdivision of a taluk).
As beforehand reported by indianexpress.com, Kumaraswamy instructed reporters in February in Hassan, “I knowledgeable the principal secretary, ‘Look, this isn’t authorities land, it’s my private property. How will you come with out issuing a discover? I purchased this land 40 years in the past. For those who want to survey it, first situation me a discover because the rightful proprietor’.”