Karnataka high court wants BDA to act on faulty allotments

The Karnataka high court on Tuesday pulled up  the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) for not taking any action against erring officers responsible for irregularities in allotment of sites, necessitating providing of alternative plots.

“You should initiate criminal prosecution. You must register cases. Your organisation must be cleansed and only then will we hear the matter,” a division bench headed by chief justice JS Khehar told the BDA.

The division bench was hearing a writ appeal filed by the BDA against a single-judge bench order dated December 14, 2009.

The judge had allowed the petition challenging the cancellation of allotment of alternative sites. “You must fix your officers who were responsible for this wrong allotment of sites. They make wrong allotments and poor people keep fighting over it,” chief justice Khehar observed.

Muni Reddy had filed a petition before the single-judge bench, challenging the BDA order of May 2009  cancelling the allotment of alternative sites. The BDA had contended that it noticed that there was a mistake in the allotment of an alternative site in Sector 6 of HSR Layout and it was violative of the BDA rules.

Reddy contended that Mallikarjun Khuba, an MLA then, had bought a site from the BDA. However, due to some problems with the site measurement, Khuba was provided an alternative site which he later sold to Reddy. The BDA later issued a notice to Khuba and cancelled the property allotment. But the cancellation of the allotment of site affected Reddy, who had become the site owner.

The writ petition was allowed and BDA’s order cancelling the allotment was quashed.