Bengaluru: Taking cognizance a complaint that accused eight MLCs of the Karnataka government of misusing public funds by claiming false travel allowance, a city court in Bengaluru has directed the Vidhana Soudha police to register an FIR against them.
The accused MLCs — from the Congress and the JD(S), along with an independent MLC — will be booked under Section 420 of 177 IPC and under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act 1950.
The MLCs showed themselves as residents of Bengaluru when they got their names added in the voter list for the 2016 Mayoral polls, but claimed a travel allowance of over Rs 30 lakh during the subsequent period.
The complaint, filed under Section 200 Cr PC by one Ramanna, names BR Timmapur, Allum Veerabhadrappa, Raghu Achar, N S Boseraju and S Ravi from the Congress and C R Manohar and Appaji Gowda from the JD-S, along with independent MLC M D Lakshminarayana.
Boseraju, for instance, claimed travel allowance (TA) for going to his hometown Raichur, costing the exchequer Rs 7,38,500. The documents furnished to Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) claim that he is a resident of Sadashivnagar in Bengaluru and belongs to the Malleshwaram assembly constituency. Similar claims were made by other MLCs.
In a report submitted to the chief electoral officer in 2017, the BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad had said that the 8 MLCs were indeed found guilty of falsifying their addresses to get their names included in the electoral rolls for the August 2016 mayoral polls.
The Election Commission, too, had initiated a probe based on a complaint filed by the BBMP BJP opposition leader Padmanabha Reddy who was seeking disqualification of the accused. Reddy now stands vindicated. "We had submitted our report to the EC but now the court has finally directed the police to register an FIR against these MLCs. I am happy with the court’s decision, we need to ensure that they are disqualified," Reddy said.
Congress leader Raghu Achar told News 18 that he learnt about the FIR through media reports and said he would seek other legal options. News 18 has reached out to the MLCs and requested a response. MLCs Allam Veerbhadrappa and MLC NS Boseraju remained unavailable for comment.
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