Karnataka - Gulbarga   

Row could have been avoided if we had given in: Kheny

Special Correspondent

Officials spreading falsehood against company: NICE managing director

GULBARGA: Managing director of Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises Ltd. (NICE) Ashok Kheny on Sunday said that if he had acceded to the demand of the land mafia and some bureaucrats, the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC) project would not have been affected by controversy.

Addressing presspersons here, Mr. Kheny alleged that a senior bureaucrat who had illegally constructed 60 posh houses in the lands near Guntikeri tank on the outskirts of Bangalore and coming under the BMIC project area and sold them at a high cost, had sought changing the map of the project. However, the demand was not accepted.

Mr. Kheny said that the senior bureaucrat and other senior officials, whose lands were lost, had ganged up against NICE and were spreading falsehood against the company. They had misled Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy and his father H.D. Deve Gowda.

Mr. Kheny said that more than 26,000 people had lost their lands for the project and why should concession be shown only to some influential bureaucrats. To another question, Mr. Kheny said the construction of five townships was approved in the original pact signed by Mr. Deve Gowda. In fact, one of the townships was proposed to be constructed after Banashankari 6th Stage in Bangalore, but following a request by the then Chief Minister J.H. Patel, NICE agreed to redesign the map.

Mr. Kheny said NICE was not interested in grabbing prime land and nobody was sure of the extra land that was supposed to have been given to the project.

"The figures about the extra land keep changing every day; initially it was said that 2,451 acres of extra land had been given for the project. Later, an advertisement issued by the Janata Dal (S) claimed that 1,214 acres of extra land has been given and later another claim was made that 1,740 acres of extra land had been given," he said.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Kheny opens parishat's cultural festival
Row could have been avoided if we had given in: Kheny
`Complete land acquisition for Bidar-Gulbarga line'
They are firm to realise their objective

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu