In Karnataka, chief ministers and controversial land deals have an age-old link, especially with land in Bangalore, where prices have gone up tenfold or more in the past decade. Land, licensing and construction have been the primary cash-generating avenues for political parties in a city that is home to the non-bribe-paying technology industry. Successive CMs have found themselves mired in land deals. BJP Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa was entangled in a land scam during his tenure and before him, Janata Dal’s chief minister, H.D.
Kumaraswamy, was embroiled in a land controversy too. It is now current CM Siddaramaiah’s turn to find himself ensnared in a “denotification scam” involving hundreds of acres of prime land in Bangalore’s Arkavathy Layout.
Denotification is the cancellation of a government notification of intent to acquire land for a variety of public purposes, including housing. The genesis of Arkavathy dates back decades to S.M. Krishna’s term in the early 2000s. Krishna proposed Arkavathy as a residential township, fashioning it out of a dozen-plus villages near Yelahanka in the now-booming north Bangalore belt. The township was to consist of 22,000 housing plots and over 3,800 acres were marked to be acquired from farmers and other landowners. Many owners approached the courts which, some years later, directed the government to pare down the total land acquisition. Successive chief ministers, including Yeddyurappa, Kumaraswamy and even Sadananda Gowda have all denotified Arkavathy land.
But Siddaramaiah is now accused of illegally denotifying a further 541 acres of land in excess and violation of the directions of the Karnataka High Court. The opposition BJP and Janata Dal claim to possess file notings by the CM directing officials to “redo” and demand that the CM quit. Siddaramaiah has vehemently denied the allegations and called it an opposition plot to destabilise his government.
For onlookers, it is déjà vu. Just a few years ago, it was the opposition Congress pressuring the Congress-appointed governor, H.R. Bhardwaj, to give permission to prosecute Yeddyurappa, which he ultimately did.
This time, the roles are reversed. The opposition BJP in Karnataka is pressing for permission from the (Central) BJP government’s appointee, Governor Vajubhai Vala, to prosecute the Congress CM.
The recurring political spectacle is frustrating for Karnataka’s voters. Opposing parties have ruled Bangalore and Delhi for the past several terms. In the 2013 assembly election, voters jettisoned the non-performing BJP government in the state and voted in a Congress government. And as has been the pattern, merely a year later in the Lok Sabha elections, Karnataka voted overwhelmingly for the BJP, which formed the government in Delhi.
Both the BJP and Janata Dal are stridently demanding the CM’s scalp. If the BJP-appointed governor does permit Siddaramaiah to be put on trial, it will be an embarrassment for the Congress as well as its leaders in Delhi. Siddaramaiah, an old school, headstrong politician, might well quit if the governor permits his prosecution, though he is not legally required to do so. For the Congress leadership in Delhi, the unfolding scenario in Bangalore is about “what next”. But it could also turn into “who next”.
Even setting aside the Arkavathy controversy, Siddaramaiah’s chief ministerial tenure has not exactly been peachy. Several party MLAs are disgruntled as they feel they are not getting their way; a few state ministers are peeved because they feel they are sidelined; and the state Congress chief, G. Parameshwara, eyeing the deputy chief minister’s post and repeatedly being foiled by Siddaramaiah, is the unhappiest of all.
A high-achieving government in Karnataka could have been the Congress’s chance to redeem its Delhi defeat and demonstrate that it means business. Yet, in the state where it has the largest presence and support base, its last bastion in the country, the party’s image is dipping and its legislators are caught up in an “old versus new” faction fight — with Siddaramaiah and his supporters who entered the Congress in the last decade representing the “new” group.
As things have unravelled, the party’s Delhi leadership has summoned Siddaramaiah and other leaders several times. But the last thing the Congress’s central leadership wants is a crisis in Karnataka. When scorned in the past, Siddaramaiah has not hesitated to walk and split the party he belonged to. This anxiety hangs over the party.
It was less than two years ago that the CM made a good start, announcing several welfare programmes and stressing that he, as a leader of the backward Kuruba community, would work towards uplifting Karnataka’s underprivileged masses. The intentions were good but the implementation has been wanting. The government has increasingly waffled on issues — initiating and backtracking on measures like the anti-superstition bill, fee regulation for medical colleges, takeover of religious maths and so on. It has faced the ignominy of being chastised by the assembly speaker multiple times. Neither the state unit nor the Congress leadership in Delhi can afford such a slide in Karnataka.
