Case against Shettar quashed in special court
The Lokayukta special court has dismissed a private complaint filed against Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar and slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 against the complainant, Chetan S.M., a journalism student, for wasting the judiciary time. Chetan had accused Mr Shettar of directing a special land acquisition officer to denotify 178 acres of land which was under acquisition for a Mega Market for farmers.
The complaint was filed on July 11 by Chetan, who is also the working president of Bharat Vidyarthi Kriya Samithi. He alleged that the Mega Market project was initiated in 2000 and final notification to acquire 365 acres of land in Dasanapura hobli was issued in 2001.
Subsequently, Rs 13 crore was earmarked for compensating the farmers who had lost the land. While the project was scrapped, 178 acres of private land was denotified on the orders of a special land acquisition officer in 2006. Chetan had claimed that Mr Shettar, who was the revenue minister then, allegedly asked special land acquisition officer of the revenue department, Nagaraj, to denotify the entire 178 acres of private land in one single order in 2006.
He claimed that it was Mr Shettar who had directed Mr Nagaraj to issue the order. Chetan had said that the Revenue Department was not replying to RTI queries or giving him access to all the related files for the last one-and-a-half months. Lokayukta Special Court Judge N.K. Sudhindra Rao had pulled up the complainant on the day of filing the complaint. The judge asked Chetan to place before the court either the set of entire documents pertaining to the denotification or to produce the RTI applications filed. But the complainant failed to add any additional documents to the complaints, while filing for withdrawal of the complaint.
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