Karnataka High Court questions why MLA MC Sudhakar is not charged in alleged land grab against his father Chowdareddy, former home minister

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The Karnataka High Court has questioned why Chintamani MLA and former higher education minister MC Sudhakar and his brother MC Balaji were not charged as accused in the alleged land grab case against their father, former home minister Chowdareddy, despite being named in the complaint as direct beneficiaries of contaminated government land.

While refusing to quash the First Information Report (FIR) registered against Mr. Chowdareddy and another on 11 April 2017 by the former Anti-Corruption Bureau on a complaint filed by one R. Venkataramana of Chintamani on 24 April 2016, the court ordered the Lokayukta Police while April pointed out that the investigation 2 was over within six months. 2017 in view of the interim stay granted by the court.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order dismissing the petitions filed by Mr. Chowdareddy, now 89, and BH Narayanappa, the then Municipal Council Commissioner of Chintamani.

“Though the prima facie material reveals that Mr. Balaji and Dr. Sudhakar were the direct beneficiaries, both are conspicuously absent from the line of the accused. How the alleged beneficiaries remain outside the dragnet of the crime is a matter of grave concern,” the court said.

Case background

The land in question is one acre 19 guntas in survey number 11 in Kannampalli village of Chintamani taluk which has been classified as “Hullu Banni Kharab” government land. Chowdareddy’s private land in survey no.

Referring to revenue records, allotment deeds and official reports, the court observed that survey number 11 remained the government land of “B Kharab” from 1965-66 till date, even in 2026.

After Mr. Chowdareddy became an MLA in 1989, the court observed that his sons got their private land in survey number 12 and 13 transferred in 1993 and discreetly developed residential plots using the land in survey number 11 and the land created across all the three survey numbers was later shared between the father and the sons under a partition deed dated 2000.

Later, Mr. Chowdareddy and Mr. Balaji executed an unregistered general power of attorney in favor of the Government Employees’ Family House Construction Co-operative Society, which empowered it to sell the plots created in survey numbers 12 and 13, while the plot also absorbed the plots in survey number 11, the court observed.

“It appears that the government land was treated as ancestral property, divided among family members and traded as private property,” the court said.

All these transactions came to light in 2014 when the complainant, after becoming a councillor, discovered that survey number 11 continued to be registered as government land.

Initial rejection

Interestingly, in 2015, Mr Chowdareddy denied encroaching on any government land and said he and his sons would vacate it if they were found to have occupied such land by mistake. However, in their subsequent written reply to the removal of encroachment notice, they claimed that the government land in survey number 11 is in adverse possession, claiming that Mr. Chowdareddy’s father, Anjaney Reddy, had been occupying it since the 1950s.

In this case, the investigation is not only justified, but also necessary, the court said.

Published – 08 Jul 2026 0:24 IST