For the first time, Lokayukta Justice directly visits BDA office in person

Bengaluru: This is the first time after Lokayukta got power, Lokayukta Justice B S Patil himself has visited the place where the raid took place. BDA Secretary YB Shanthraju visited the BDA head office and inspected the documents. After this, he discussed with the Lokayukta officials who were busy with the raid and asked the complainant to contact the complainants and get a statement about which section the complainants were cheated on. The raid must be thoroughly checked and concluded. Receive complaints from the public and check records everywhere in the office. Also, he instructed to monitor and investigate BDA land allotment, land acquisition, and town planning.

Lokayukta has conducted a raid in Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) office 6 months after getting its power. Through this, Lokayukta is all set to expose the alleged massive corruption in BDA.

A team of 35 Lokayukta officers and police personnel of 6 teams under the leadership of Lokayukta Justice B S Patil raided the BDA headquarters and various BDA sub-offices in the city on Friday. Lokayukta police inspected the seized files in the offices of City Planning Department, Engineering, Land Acquisition, Site Planning Departments in BDA.

All the 4 doors of the BDA office were closed and documents were searched. During the raid, everyone inside the BDA office was interrogated one by one, checked and sent outside by the police. They sat in the BDA office premises till evening and checked the documents related to the confiscated BDA premises.

Lokayukta IGP Subrahmaneswar Rao personally visited and instructed the staff on how to conduct further investigation. At the same time, three brokers who were going to negotiate a deal with the public in the office fell into the Lokayukta trap. The documents search work is going on under the leadership of Lokayukta SP KV Ashok.

The Lokayukta received a series of complaints from the public against the BDA officials, including illegalities in the process of allotment of BDA corner plot and layout construction, malpractice in compensation to beneficiaries, sale of registered land to someone else, delay in distribution of compensation, bribery to get site planning. In addition to this, when the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB), which had earlier raided the BDA office, conducted an investigation, many illegalities of the BDA officials came to light. After the ACB was abolished, this inquiry report also came to the Lokayukta. Overall, the investigation found that corruption of crores of rupees has taken place in BDA. Based on all these documents, Lokayukta Justice B S Patil formed a special team a few days ago and collected evidence against the BDA malpractices.