Daijiworld Media Network – Sullia (SP)
Sullia, Apr 2: Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) commissioner, Sham Bhatt, has clarified that the BDA site, allotment of which was sought by Lord Subrahmanyeshwara Temple, Subrahmanya for setting up of its information centre at Bangalore, was allotted to UT Nasima Fareed Memorial Charitable Education Trust, as the site had been specifically earmarked for a service organization exclusively involved with serving physically and mentally challenged persons.
It may be recalled that the alleged involvement of minister U T Khadar in ensuring that the application for the allotment of this particular site by the said temple got rejected, and a trust run by his brother benefitted as a result, had kicked up a lot of storm in coastal Karnataka.
‘’BDA had invited applications from interested organizations for allotment of 34 sites in Bangalore. On January 30, 2013, executive officer of Subrahmanya Temple, H M Kali, filed an application in prescribed form, seeking allotment of CA site No 2 under serial No 5 in the 4th block of Banashankari 6th stage in Bangalore. He had shown the purpose as setting up of temple information centre. Before filing this application, some members of the temple managing committee and executive officer had visited Banashankari to check the location of the site. In spite of being aware that this site had been reserved for some other purpose, the executive officer mentioned this particular site number in the application, as some people expressed the confidence of getting the same changed at a later date," Bhatt said.
Bhatt feels that the temple authorities could have applied for a suitable site after correctly verifying the purposes for which they are reserved. The said trust had applied for a site for the second time, and its earlier application had been rejected.
Out of 11 applications received for this site, five were found to be eligible. The site was later allotted to an organization, which conformed to norms and was found to be most eligible out of these five organizations, BDA commissioner said. He clarified that the deposit of Rs 3,99,858 collected from all the other organizations were refunded to them.