| The Soap opera continues....!!! TOI, Blore, 19th Jan 2009
Gowda courts trouble yet again
Continues To Harass NICE Despite Censure By High Court, Apex Court On Five Occasions
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Bangalore: Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and his family’s tryst with courts seems to be neverending.
Observations made by the high court on Monday, while converting Gowda’s missive as a PIL, should brace him for yet another encounter with the judiciary. His letter was written to most of the judges, including Chief Justice P D Dinakaran, with regard to the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises (BMIC) project.
Over the past five years, the government has been rapped on five occasions by the Supreme Court and Karnataka High Court for creating hurdles for Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises (NICE), promoters of BMIC. The last was in March 2008, when the SC issued notice to the state government asking it to reply on the contempt petition filed by NICE.
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HC furious over Gowda’s letter
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Bangalore: Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda’s obsession with alleged irregularities in the BMIC Project reached a new high on Monday when he sent a controversial letter to Karnataka High Court judges airing his views on the issue.
Taken aback by Gowda’s brazen action, the judges discussed it for 45 minutes.
“We received a letter dated January 8 written by the former PM. The letter was enclosed with a booklet ‘BMIC project - A case study in fraud. Collusion to defeat the ends of justice and defraud the courts’. I enquired with judges V G Sabhahit, Ram Mohan Reddy and N K Patil. Almost all judges said they had also received the same letter. We were embarrassed. In my 12-13 years experience, I have not encountered such a situation. Thereafter, we held a meeting to decide on how to proceed with this. We had two options: one to issue a contempt notice and the other to ignore it. We have decided to treat it as PIL. If we had ignored it, then there was a chance that people would have pointed fingers at us. We decided to take it positively and deal with it legally. We don’t allow courts to become platform for politics,” Chief Justice PD Dinakaran said and adjourned hearing pertaining to the Gottigeri land issue to Feb 2.
HORNETS’ NEST
Nobody is above the law: NICE advocate
Bangalore: Dushyant Dave, counsel for Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise, promoters of BMIC, took exception to Deve Gowda’s letter in the high court on Monday.
The counsel pressed for initiating contempt proceedings. “If an ordinary man had written such a letter, could the judiciary have taken it lightly? This is nothing but interference in the administration of justice. Nobody is special and above law,’’ he said.
Amid all this, advocate-general Udaya Holla told the court he will not represent the state in the BMIC case pertaining to contempt. “The MD of NICE has made certain allegations against me in the media. I have decided not to represent the state in the case and Ashok Haranahalli will be officiating as special counsel,’’ he said. The CJ asked Holla to render assistance to the court whenever necessary.
WHO SENT IT?
Mystery shrouds over who handdelivered the letter and the booklet to the CJ and the judges. A separate inquiry on the carrier of the letter was held by the court.
Advocates’ Association of Bangalore president D L Jagadish said he had not authorized anybody to deliver the letter and booklets to the judges. The staff had said somebody claiming to be Jagadish’s assistant had delivered the letter. State JD(S) spokesperson Y S V Datta admitted Gowda had sent copies of the letter and the booklet. While acknowledging having sent it, Gowda declined to comment: “I will wait for the court’s notice.’’
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REPEATED REPRIMANDS, BUT NO LESSONS LEARNED?
The first reprimand was in May 2005 when the Karnataka HC, in its judgment, allowed NICE to go ahead with the BMIC project.
Next came the severe censure when the same order was upheld by the SC on April 20, 2006. Here, it should be noted that SC imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on the state for bringing before it frivolous arguments on an appeal against the Karnataka HC verdict upholding the BMIC project. Clearing the Rs 2,250-crore four-lane expressway, it further said: “The entire appeal was with malafide intention”.
The apex court also imposed a penalty of Rs 50,000 on former JD(U) MLA J C Madhuswamy and CPM’s G V Srirama Reddy, who had appealed against the HC verdict.
The most severe censure came when the SC dismissed the government’s review petition seeking review of its April 20 order on BMIC project, and rehearing of the matter. The Kumaraswamy government had contended that NICE had secured 2,150 acres excess land around Bangalore worth over Rs 30,000 crore, which would affect future generations and also result in a loss to the exchequer. However, it was dismissed without being heard in November 2006.
Having been rapped by the courts on several occasions, the Kumaraswamy government took a different route to stall the BMIC project in October 2007. This time, the cabinet decided to drop NICE and invite global tenders to complete the project. The government also short-listed Global Infrastructure Consortium (GIC) to take up the project. However, the plan remained only on paper as even this idea was struck down by the SC in November 2007.
The SC also issued contempt notices against seven bureaucrats for noncompliance of its April 2006 order: former chief secretary P B Mahishi, former PWD principal secretary Sudhir Krishna, former revenue secretary S M Jaamdar, former urban development department secretary Subash Chandra and bureaucrats Rame Gowda, Shashidhar and Mukunda Hemmige.
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In BLACK & WHITE
The five-page letter written on January 8, 2009 by former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda begins explaining why he had to write it and why the JD(S) had to publish the book. Gowda repeatedly hails the judiciary, but expresses concerns about misinterpretation of judgments and involvement of counsels, bureaucrats, businesses and the present government in the alleged fraud. “After the change in government (when JD(S)-BJP collapsed), when the state was under President’s rule and later when a new elected government was formed, the nexus at the bureaucratic and political level has been making attempts at ensuring that the HC and SC are prevented from doing justice,’’ the letter states. Gowda says his character had been painted in black through media for opposing a private contractor.
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13th January 2009, 18:07
