Bangalore Mayor, wife ’landless labourers’

Mangalore Today/ CNN-IBN

Bangalore, Sept. 02: Believe it or not, Bangalore’s Mayor and his wife are landless labourers, or so they claimed, to get eight acres of government land meant for poor landless workers.

Mayor DV Murthy now faces charges of furnishing false certificates in what is bound to be yet another embarrassment for the BJP in the state that has already been embittered by land scams. And with this, Murthy will also be the first Mayor to face charges of handing out fake affidavits for government land benefits meant for landless labourers.

RP Sharma, SP, Bangalore Metropolitan Task Force, said, "The declaration of he and his wife being landless labourers, has been found to be false. The second thing, one family can apply for only one allotment. So here two allotments were sought or rather two allotments were obtained... Mr Murthy’s wife used her father’s name and not his name."

The land in question is an eight-acre plot in Somanahalli village in the outskirts of Bangalore. A modest estimate puts its value at over a crore. The allotment to the city’s first couple has been cancelled now. The charges of filing false affidavits, though, stay.

The Mayor, however, is unperturbed.

Smiling, he says, "It’s a judicial matter... We can’t comment.. it’s a false case against me."

Legally, it is an offence punishable with three years in prison, but morally, to usurp benefits that should ideally go to poor labourers points to a much deeper rot in the BJP that’s ruling the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike.