Probe CM’s scams: Court
CITY www.bangaloremirror.com/city
Grants Lokayukta 6 weeks to complete inquiry and submit final report on complaint filed by advocates
A
local court on Thursday postponed
prosecution in a complaint filed against
Karnataka chief minister B S
Yeddyurappa and his family members
for alleged involvement in land scams and
ordered Lokayukta Police to probe the matter.
When the first complaint out of the five
filed by city-based advocates came up for
orders before Additional Civil and Sessions
court judge C B Hipparagi, he postponed the
prosecution and referred the matter to super-
intendent of police, Lokayukta.
Further granting six weeks time to SP,
Bangalore City division of Lokayukta to com-
plete his inquiry and submit the final report to
the court on the first complaint, the Special
Court adjourned to May 4, 2011, recording of
the sworn statements in connection with the
remaining four complaints. Advocates Sirajin
Basha and K N Balaraj have filed complaints
against Yeddyurappa and his family members
for their alleged involvement in the land scams.
The advocates in the first complaint leveled
naaptol
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three charges against
the accused. The first
pertains to denotifica-
tion of agriculture land
in Arkavathy Layout
and its sale to
Yeddyurappa’s son B Y
Vijayendra and his son-
in-law Sohan Kumar
who in turn sold it to a private mining firm
making an “unlawful gain” of Rs 19.6 crore.
The second allegation is “illegal sale” of
another piece of land in the same layout to a
private company, Dhavalagiri developers of
which Yeddyurappa’s two sons and son-in-law
are the directors, for Rs 60 lakh as against the
market value of the land which was Rs 8 crore.
The third charge is “illegal amalgamation”
of road land and ten sites in Arkavathy Layout
by Yeddyurappa on an application filed by one
Akkamma and others, who never owned any
of these sites, with the sole purpose of appro-
priating the property for themselves.
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NO SECURITY REQUIRED
While the advocates were happy that the court
had ordered a Lokayukta probe, they politely
turned down the offer of police security while
leaving the court premises.
“No, we don’t want police security,” said
Balaraju politely to the police officer, who
queried if they required police security. Both
the lawyers had feared for their lives and had
approached the Governor for security after fil-
ing the case against the chief minister.
Speaking on the court order, Balaraj said,
“Considering the gravity and magnitude of the
case, the judge has ordered the police wing of
Lokayukta to probe the matter. We are very
happy, it is one of the important decisions by
the court.”
In another case, the court has asked the SP
of Bangalore city division of Lokayukta to
probe the issue of illegal denotification in
which home and transport minister R Ashok
is allegedly involved along with 14 others.
BMB & Agencies
W
Sameer Ranjan Bakshi
sameerranjan.bakshi@timesgroup.com
arren Buffett and Bill Gates may
just have been chasing a rainbow
in their attempts to get Indians
to open up their pursestrings for
philanthropy, if fundraising at the
Twestival is anything to go by.
The Twitter festival in Bangalore, which
has been collecting money for charity
through ticket sales for the last three years,
has seen a 60-per cent drop in the money
raised compared to last year.
Hrish, a Tweeter who organised the
Twestival at Manchester United Cafi Bar,
Koramangala, on Thursday said, “We
have been doing this since the last three
years. In the last two years, we collected
` 1 lakh and ` 3 lakh, but this year we
have only sold about 200 tickets costing
` 300 each.”
That comes to only ` 60,000. Asked for
a reason, Hrish said they didn’t get too
many sponsors this year.
Perhaps the timing wasn’t right given
the India-Australia match? But Harish says
that was not a problem. “We organised a
live screening of the match free of cost.
People would have also got a complimen-
tary bottle of beer.”
The evening also included performanc-
es by rock bands Thermal and a Quarter
and Parvaaz.
This year, Bangalore’s Tweeple are rais-
ing funds for Snehadeep Trust for the
Disabled which was established in 1999 by
three visually impaired graduates.
They focus on mobility training,
computer training and information
technology to help the differently-
abled in terms of education and employ-
ment opportunities. All proceeds
from the ticket money will be given to
the charity.
| FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2011 4
WEEK’S TOP
MANU PRASAD 5
TECH WRAP FROM THE WORLD WIDE WEB
liked/hated this column? write to
bmfeedback@indiatimes.com
BROWSER UPGRADE
Mozilla’s release of Firefox 4, a full day ahead of
the scheduled release, was a precursor to the speed
of the browser itself, which
boasts a minimalistic look, syncs
across devices, has improved
HTML 5 support, better crash
protection and tab grouping. It
was downloaded a record 7.1
million times in the first 24
hours, eclipsing IE9’s 2.3 million, though Firefox
was released on a wider set of platforms.
Meanwhile, Google has pushed Chrome 11 into
Beta, and promises much with an HTML5 speech
input API that allows Chrome to transcribe what
you say to your computer, and a first cut 3D CSS,
which will allow developers to create 3D websites.
SALE @ YAHOO
Yahoo’s plans for ridding itself of Delicious have
been known for a while and reports indicate that
'Project Dragon’ - the code
for the sale - is in the region
of $1-2 million. Yahoo is also
planning to shut down
AllTheWeb, the alternative
search engine it bought in
2003. Earlier, Yahoo had
announced that 24th May would be the last day of
MyBlogLog, a social networking community for
bloggers it bought in 2007. There was also talk of
Yahoo planning to sell its 35 per cent stake in Yahoo
Japan. Meanwhile, Yahoo has launched Search
Direct, its version of Google Instant.
COMMENTS ON FACEBOOK
After making news with its LinkedIn partnership
last week, Snaptu has now been acquired by
Facebook for an estimated
$60-70 million. Facebook
also upped the ante in the
check-in battles, announcing
that it will soon allow users
to check in to events.
Meanwhile changes are
being made to the interface
too, as the ‘Comment’ but-
ton has been removed and tagging ability added to
comments. It is also testing ‘Related Ads’ basis the
user's status updates and wall posts. Several devel-
opers have received an email from Facebook asking
them to remove Google AdSense ads on their apps.
GOOGLE WORLD
Speaking of buttons, Google likes Facebook's but-
tons so much that they got Orkut a ‘Like’ button
too, albeit with smi-
leys. Google also
received a patent for
its famed doodles
recently. But in bad
news for the search
giant, Amazon's new Appstore for Android has been
sued by Apple for the use of 'Appstore'. Meanwhile,
Google Voice has been integrated with Sprint, the
third largest telecom network in the US with 50 mil-
lion customers. Google has also opened a start-up
incubator in Africa called Umbono and is now offer-
ing US non-profits a special way to use Google Apps.
OPENING NEW WINDOWS
Nokia has announced that work has begun on
its first smartphone with Windows software. RIM
also announced a partnership
with Microsoft for cloud servic-
es with BlackBerry Office 365,
which though hosted by RIM
will be part of the forthcoming
Microsoft Office 365 offering.
Meanwhile Microsoft's associa-
tion with Facebook got even stronger as it was
announced that the next version of Office will have
Facebook IM integrated.