The Hindu : National : Gowda criticises BJP government for backing NICE

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Gowda criticises BJP government for backing NICE

S. Rajendran

Book on Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project highlights ‘malpractices’

Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

ON THE OFFENSIVE: The former Prime Minister and Janata Dal (S) president, Deve Gowda, with his book on the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project, in New Delhi. —

BANGALORE: The former Prime Minister and national president of the Janata Dal (Secular), H.D. Deve Gowda, has criticised Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa for supporting the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise, which is executing the Bangalore-Mysore Expressway project. He alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party was using the project to fund “unconstitutional programmes” to strengthen the State government, which has a wafer thin majority in the Legislative Assembly.

Mr. Deve Gowda has brought out a book titled Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project — A Case Study in Fraud and Collusion to Defeat the Ends of Justice and Defraud Courts. He told The Hindu here on Tuesday that his fear now was that funds from the same source would be used by the BJP to fight the ensuing byelections to seven Legislative Assembly constituencies in Karnataka. According to him, “Operation Lotus” to win over legislators from the JD(S) and the Congress was executed with funds from the same source.

The book brought out by the legal cell of the Janata Dal(S) with a detailed foreword written by the former Prime Minister highlights the various alleged malpractices relating to the Bangalore-Mysore expressway project which has been under execution for the last 13 years. According to the book: “A judicial fraud has been committed in collusion with some select officials in the Government and given the high level of judicial activism and integrity in the country I am confident justice will be rendered.”

The book seeks to highlight the point that neither the former Prime Minister nor the Janata Dal (S) pursued a vindictive path against the project company. “By a quirk of fate,” says Mr. Deve Gowda, “I was forced to move to the Centre to take charge as the country’s prime minister and remained in the dark about the expressway project till 2002 when I was elected to the Lok Sabha from Kanakapura and my constituents [farmers] approached me over the injustice being meted out to them.”

Mr. Deve Gowda said the latest Cabinet decisions of the BJP government exposed the truth.

He said Chief Minister Yeddyurappa, who was a party to all the Cabinet decisions of the H.D. Kumaraswamy government, had chosen to disband the B.C. Patel Commission of Inquiry (approved by the two Houses of the State Legislature) into the alleged malpractices, withdraw the global tender that was floated according to the Swiss Challenge method (after NICE failed to execute the project) to identify a new promoter for the expressway project and grant lands to the project company apart from granting permission for the sale of such lands, which is not part of the original Frame Work Agreement entered into with the project company. “Rather than abide by the Cabinet decisions, the incumbent Chief Minister has opted to favour the project company obviously owing to vested interests.”

The former Prime Minister said: “All that we want is that the orders of the Supreme Court issued in April 2006 in the BMIC (Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor) case should be strictly adhered to by the State Government and the project company. There should not be any deviation from the court orders at any cost. At no stage, there was any attempt on the part of the previous government not to implement the project as conceived originally and upheld in the Somashekara Reddy case which is the basis for all successive judicial approvals of the BMIC project in the apex court.”

In his foreword to the book, Mr. Deve Gowda alleged that the expressway project, which was approved when he was Chief Minister of Karnataka (1994-96) to decongest Bangalore, has turned into a Rs.30,000 crore real estate venture contemplating the exploitation of lands adjoining Bangalore, which will indeed congest the city.

“The purpose of this book is to put the facts in the public domain for the people of Karnataka, the elected representatives and others to know the truth behind the expressway project. I fervently hope that the Supreme Court will take suo motu action to pin down the perpetrators of the fraud.”

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