In Karnataka, Everybody Loves a Good Scam

Politicians and activists are pulling out decades-old land deals and titling them as a scam to settle scores.

With the Karnataka High Court verdict on Chief Minister Siddaramaiah challenging Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot's sanction to prosecute him in the Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) sites allotment case expected any time, there appears to be a temporary ceasefire between the ruling Congress party and the BJP-JD(S) opposition alliance.

In the last two months, Gehlot has had his hands full. He has been receiving petitions from the Congress party, opposition parties and even activists, who have upped the ante by pulling out decades-old land transactions or deals of their leaders and then titling them as a scam to settle scores.

While three activists petitioned the Governor and got the sanction to prosecute Siddaramaiah in MUDA allotting 14 alternative sites to his wife, the BJP claimed that All India Congress Committee (AICC) President Mallikarjun M Kharge's family unfairly received land from the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) for their Siddhartha Vihar Trust in Kalaburagi.

The Congress party retaliated by charging the BJP's opposition leader in the Legislative Council Chalavadi K Narayanaswamy with misusing a civic amenity site allotted to run an educational institution by turning it into a biryani joint in Hoskote, Bangalore Rural district and a two-acre land given by the KIADB for an industrial unit in Mysuru where only a shed was put up.

The trend of giving these land transactions the tag of a scam started after the Lok Sabha polls, when the BJP's performance took a dive. The party won 17 of the total 28 Lok Sabha seats against the 25 it held since 2019, while the Congress party improved its tally from one in 2019 to nine seats in 2024.

According to political analyst Harish Ramaswamy, unlike in the West, Indian politics is not a structured or organised institution. It’s more like a mob coming together without a theoretical or ideological base. This has misguided our priorities in politics and society, leading to personalised political aspirations. The bankruptcy of ideas and alternate policy-making ability has led to the politics of vengeance and one-upmanship. Amidst all this, there is bound to be a miscarriage of governance. Karnataka's politics, in this regard, is an appropriate case study.

Even as corruption allegations are being traded back and forth, Siddaramaiah constituted a five-member ministerial committee headed by Home Minister G Parameshwara on 10 September to review all the "scams" during the previous BJP regime. The BJP was in power with BS Yediyurappa at the helm from July 2019 to July 2021 and was succeeded by Basavaraj Bommai, who was in power till May 2023.

Parameshwara told the media that his committee will review 20-25 scams that had occurred during the BJP regime and submit a status report to the cabinet. "Cases should not catch the dust without action, so we will review them,'' he said. Asked on the BJP dubbing the move as political vendetta, Parameshwara asked, "What has the BJP been doing?''

Siddaramaiah dismissed the BJP's theory of political vendetta saying, "What sort of politics is the BJP indulging in the MUDA sites allotment case against me? We don't engage in vendetta politics. Our focus is on penalising wrong-doers."

Besides the cabinet sub-committee, the government has constituted inquiry commissions to probe alleged irregularities in the management of COVID-19, the recruitment of police sub-inspectors fiasco, alternative sites allotment by MUDA, complaints by contractors of a 40 percent commission demand for public works, and a Special Investigation Team looking into an alleged Bitcoin scam. All these irregularities and mismanagements are alleged to have taken place during the BJP regime.

The interim report of an inquiry commission probing alleged irregularities in COVID-19 management in Karnataka has made “serious observations” highlighting the misappropriation of funds to the tune of “crores of rupees” by the previous government.

The probe panel, in its report, has reviewed purchases and procurements to the tune of Rs 6,651 crore made by Family and Health Services, the Directorate of Medical Education, the Karnataka State Medical Supplies Corporation, the Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology, and Bruhat Bengaluru. The report has been given to Karnataka Chief Secretary Shalini Rajneesh and other officers.

A senior BJP leader, who did not want to be quoted said, "There are around 100 families from all parties in Karnataka, who continue to receive benefits from the government. They are in power when their party is ruling. It's a corruption of the coalition. My party is also into it.''

The Congress party has taken exception to the Governor's action of giving the nod to prosecute Siddaramaiah while being silent on similar prosecution permissions pending against Union minister HD Kumaraswamy and former ministers Shashikala Jolle and Murugesh R Nirani.

Senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, making his submissions in the high court on behalf of Siddaramaiah, said that the Governor took two-and-a-half years to reject the request for sanction against Jolle about irregularities in the supply of eggs to school children. In a sting operation carried out by a section of the media, Jolle as Minister for Women and Child Welfare was seeking money during the tender process for procurement of eggs for distribution to lactating mothers and children belonging to anganwadis of the Kalyana Karnataka region.

Singhvi argued that while Jolle's case was caught on camera, the Governor had singled out Siddaramaiah in a matter that was 23 years old, whereas the latter had not signed a single file pertaining to the issue. Singhvi added that while a clarification has been sought in Nirani's case, a request against Kumaraswamy was rejected. A Special Investigative Team of the Lokayukta had sought permission to prosecute Kumaraswamy in November 2023 in an illegal mining case.

BJP MP Lahar Singh Siroya has alleged that Kharge's trust got five acres of land at an aerospace park in Bengaluru meant for civic amenities under the Scheduled Castes quota in March this year. Also, 19 acres of land were given free to the International Institute for Pali, Sanskrit and Comparative Philosophy run by the trust in 2014.

IT/BT and RDPR minister Priyank Kharge refuted the allegations saying that the Pali Institute was established on 14 February 2014 as a public trust with the Deputy Commissioner of Kalaburgi representing the Karnataka government and that the 16 acres of land has been given on lease for 30 years to the Pali Institute by the government. "The BJP is targeting Congress leaders who are being vocal against them," Priyank has claimed.

Siroya said that raising the land allotment issue with the Kharge family had nothing to do with timing. "The allegations which I have made were already in the public domain and nobody was talking about it. I only tweeted the same information as I am indebted to the people of Karnataka," he added.

Regarding the counter charge by the Congress party against him of his alleged involvement in the purchase of Rs 23 crore sub-standard sarees from Surat to be distributed to Bhagyalakshmi scheme beneficiaries in 2011, Siroya asserted, "These are allegations made to silence me. I am collecting documents on the matter."

(Naheed Ataulla is a senior political journalist based in Bengaluru. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)