Karnataka Lokayukta quits,says deeply hurt

The rules of the society state that people who already own sites in Bangalore are not eligible for a site.

Former Supreme Court judge Justice Shivaraj V Patil on Monday quit his position as the head of the Karnataka Lokayukta,the quasi judicial anti-corruption agency,in the light of allegations that the judge and his wife violated the rules of housing cooperatives in the state by not declaring prior ownership of properties in Bangalore while buying a site in 2006.

Justice Patil,who was earlier the one-man commission that went into 2G spectrum allotment issue,submitted his resignation to Governor H R Bhardwaj barely 47 days after he replaced Justice N Santosh Hegde as the Lokayukta.

An emotional Justice Patil,in a statement he read out,said that he was resigning because of an uncongenial atmosphere created to his functioning as the Lokayukta through a malicious campaign in the media. This malicious campaign has deeply hurt and pained me. In this uncongenial atmosphere I have deemed it appropriate to submit my resignation, Justice Patil said in a media briefing where he did not take questions on the allegations against him.

The main charge leading to the former SC judges resignation is that he and his wife flouted Section 10 (a) of the bylaws of the Vyalikaval House Building Co-operative Society when they bought a 4,012 sq feet property from the society in 2006 in Bangalore. The rules of the society state that people who already own sites in Bangalore are not eligible for a site.

A campaign in a section of the media alleged that Justice Patil and his wife did not declare the fact that they owned two separate properties in Bangalore,acquired in 1985 and 1994,while buying the Vyalikaval Housing Society land in 2006 for Rs 22 lakh.

Justice Patil claimed on Monday that the private housing society land was acquired in 2006 by his wife in an auction conducted by the society to raise money after it defaulted on bank loans and land allotments. The land was bought in the name of his wife Annapoorna Patil,as an associate member of the society,in an auction where the government had allowed waiver of society rules,he said.