Karnataka High Court terms KIADB’s act of acquiring land for IMTMA in Bengaluru as ‘fraud’

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High Court of Karnataka. The Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) had acquired the land under provisions of the KIAD Act while the landowners argued that it was not meant for a genuine public purpose. | Photo Credit: File photo

Observing that “acquiring land for a profitable private entity under the guise of public purpose amounts to a fraud on statute and the Constitution”, the High Court of Karnataka has quashed the State government’s 2012 notifications acquiring private lands for the benefit of the Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers Association (IMTMA) for constructing multi-level car parking facilities for its Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC) on Tumkuru Road.

A division bench comprising Justice D.K. Singh and Justice T.M. Nadaf allowed a batch of appeals filed by Mukesh Kumar and other landowners from Madanayakanahalli village, while setting aside a 2013 single-judge order that had partially upheld the acquisition notifications of 2012.

The Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) had acquired the lands under the provisions of the KIAD Act and the landowners had challenged the acquisition by arguing that it was not for a genuine public purpose.

“The government cannot acquire land for an individual entity of its choice at the expense and cost of poor landowners,” the Bench observed while noting that that IMTMA, a charitable company managing BIEC, is a financially robust entity with substantial profits, fully capable of purchasing land through private negotiations — as it had already purchased lands through private transaction for expansion of the activities of the BIEC.

“...it is nothing but a fraud committed on statute by the authorities to divest the landowners from their land holdings for a pittance in favour of a private entity for expansion of its business and making more and more profit. This kind of exercise of power is a statutory and constitutional fraud by the State authorities,” the Bench remarked on KIADB action of acqu