More dirt: BSY freed land for men who gave loans to firms owned by family

Documents accessed and released by the Karnataka Opposition pointed to more land denotification.

Documents accessed and released on Wednesday by the Karnataka Opposition pointed to more land denotification and allotment by Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa that allegedly favoured his family members. An entry in the advances received column of the balance sheet for the year ending March 2009 of Davalagiri Developers,a company run by his sons Raghavendra,Vijayendra and son-in-law Sohan Kumar in partnership with Besto Ice Cream,shows an advance of Rs 3.5 crore from Praveen Chandra.

Firms run by Praveen Chandra also advanced a loan of Rs 2.5 crore to another real estate company,Bhagath Homes Pvt Ltd,run byYeddyurappas son-in-law and daughters-in-law,according to its March 2009 balance sheet.

Chandras firm was allotted an iron ore and manganese mining lease for 330 acres in Chitradurga through government orders of September 30,2009 and October 12,2010.

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Davalagiris balance sheet also shows an advance of Rs 75 lakh from Trishul Developers,a real estate firm run by a local hotelier and businessman,Prakash Shetty. Shetty got a plot of land measuring 3.02 acres in Bangalore acquired for a layout in 1995 and now valued at over Rs 40 crore denotified by the government on December 14,2009.

Sahyadri Health Care and Diagnostics was floated by Yeddyurappas two sons in partnership with Sagar Health Care and Diagnostics headed by BJP MLA from Bangalore,Dr Hemachandra Sagar.

Dr Sagar paid Rs 3.35 crore as share capital in Sahyadri Health Care. The Sagar group also subscribed to 25,000 shares of Rs 10 each for a 50 per cent stake in the firm floated by Yeddyurappas sons on October 15,2009.

The documents released by the Opposition show that the Yeddyurappa government on December 14,2009 the same day as the Trishul Developers allotment denotified 10 acres of land in favour of the BJP MLAs family. The Bangalore Development Authority had acquired the land to create a new extension to a layout in south Bangalore. The market value of the property is estimated to be around Rs 175 crore.

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Opposition sources,who chose to remain anonymous,claimed there were more unexplained advances in the balance sheets of the companies owned by the states first family.

Raghavendra and Vijayendra were not available for comment on Wednesday. When contacted by The Indian Express on Tuesday after a fresh set of documents were released,Yeddyurappas press secretary R P Jagadish had said that the chief minister would no longer like to react to the allegations. The party president,Nitin Gadkari,has said that he is satisfied with the answers given by the chief minister,that he has done well for the development of the state. The chief minister has said that the denotifications are legal, he said.