The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday dismissed Janata Dal (S) MLA H.D. Revanna’s plea against an investigation ordered by the Special Lokayukta Court in a complaint about his alleged involvement in illegal denotification of a piece of land.
Justice S.N. Satyanarayana passed the order on Mr. Revanna’s petition against the April 16, 2012 order of the Special Lokayukta Court, which had ordered an investigation by the Lokayukta police into the allegations made in a private complaint by R.S. Ravi Kumar.
Vacating the stay granted in May 2012 for continuing the probe against Mr. Revanna, the High Court said that there were prima facie materials to conduct the investigation.
Besides raising several legal points, Mr. Revanna had termed that he had no role in the denotification of the land even though a portion of the denotified land was purchased by his sister-in-law Kavitha, wife of H.D. Balakrishna Gowda.
It was alleged in the complaint that the then Chief Minister N. Dharam Singh, in 2005–06 illegally denotified 10.17 acres of land acquired for the formation of Banashankari 6th Stage layout by the Bangalore Development Authority. A portion of the acquired land was purchased by Ms. Kavitha prior to denotification and was sold to a land developer for a huge sum within a few months after denotification.
RTE rowThe National Public School (NPS) on Wednesday told the High Court that it will admit five petitioner-children to Class 1 under the management quota and allow them to continue education till Class 10 by subsidising their fees.
Senior counsel D.N. Nanjunda Reddy, who appeared for the NPS in a case related to admissions under the Right to Education Act quota, submitted that the concession would be restricted only to the five petitioner-children and cannot be treated as a precedent in future.
He clarified to the court that the school management had not received any order from the government on the rejection of its claim for minority status, and hence it was still not bound to admit students under the RTE Act.
The Advocate-General, on Monday, told the court that the NPS was among the 13 schools whose applications for minority status were rejected by the government and hence they had to admit students under the RTE quota.
Meanwhile, a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D.H. Waghela and Justice H.G. Ramesh disposed of the plea stating that it was open to the NPS to challenge any action of the government in case of denial of minority status.
