Repeated drubbings by SC rattles Karnataka government

Repeated drubbings by SC rattles Karnataka government
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: The drubbings received by the Karnataka government at the hands of the apex court in several prestigious cases of far-reaching implications in recent times have caused great deal of concern and embarassment to the government.

The cases included the Cauveri water dispute, the Karnataka-Maharashtra border dispute, release of TADA detenues, and now the Bangalore-Mysore infrastructure corridor project (BMICP).

Even in political circles, it is viewed that some of the cases are purely for settling personal scores or getting political mileage.

The recent drubbing in the BMICP case is nothing new considering the fact that on earlier occasions too the government had to face the ire of the Supreme court in various cases.

According to legal experts, the government failed to win most cases either because it didn't do enough home work to put up convincing arguments or engage eminent advocates to fight its cases.

The differing stands taken by the successive governments also contributed to the judgments going against the government, especially in the case of the vexed Cauveri issue.

In fact, the government itself is to be blamed for paving the way for a legal battle with regard to the prestigious BMICP by NICE. The first ever coalition government of the Congress-JD (s) led by former Chief Minister Dharam Singh constituted a high power committee to probe into the “excess” land with the NICE.

The committee, set up at the behest of former PM and JD (s) supremo HD Deve Gowda opined that NICE had acquired excess land. Thereafter, it became a longdrawn legal battle which the government ultimately lost.

The Supreme court (SC), in November 2000, had upheld the petition filed by Abdul Kareem, father of a slain Karnataka sub-inspector, challenging a designated court's order granting bail to 51 Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Detenues (TADA).

The court quashed the order dropping TADA charges and the subsequent order granting them conditional bail.

The SC bench said the designated court’s order granting bail to the TADA detenues as demanded by Veerappan were “not good in law”, and that they did not match the requirements in Section 321 of the Criminal Procedure Code while withdrawing prosecution in a TADA case.

The SC had pronounced in the case of M G Badappanavar versus State of Karnataka that there was no specific rule in the Karnataka Government Servants' (Seniority) Rules, 1957, permitting seniority to be counted in respect of a person promoted against a (reserved) roster point.

With the reworking of seniority of engineers, several engineers from the SCs and the STs were reverted to their positions, while those belonging to unreserved category got promoted.

Some of the other cases lost by the government included ; 1994 : SC rejects state's petition giving three per cent reservation to BCs, minorities in Jobs.

1998-99 : SC rejects state's stand on giving weightage to rural candidates in employment.

1995-1996: SC orders imprisonment for senior IAS officer J Vasudevan for contempt of case in a case related to promotion of an engineer in BMP.