Five acres, zero scandal
BJP’s latest ‘land scam’ at Karnataka’s Aerospace Park forgets one line from the state’s own record: the five-acre allotment to Siddhartha Vihar Trust was surrendered on 20 September 2024. That’s not a loot; that’s a return.
The five-acre KIADB allotment was recorded as surrendered on 20 September 2024.
The BJP is back waving a ₹100-crore ‘scam’ at the Congress president’s family over a KIADB plot in Bengaluru’s Hi‑Tech Defence & Aerospace Park. One problem: according to a Karnataka Legislative Council reply carrying KIADB’s own annexure, the five-acre allotment to Siddhartha Vihar Trust was voluntarily surrendered on 20-09-2024. An active land grab that was handed back two years ago is a new genre.
The official document lists Plot AM‑4, 5.00 acres, under the SC category, with the stated use as “R&D Centre, Centre of Excellence & Training Institutes.” That fits the trust’s public record of running education and training initiatives — not aerospace manufacturing, but not “no background” either, as the BJP now claims. The ₹100 crore number remains exactly what it arrived as: a party estimate with no valuation attached to it.
Earlier, the Congress government in Karnataka said the grant followed KIADB norms — “in accordance with law,” “a CA plot at a prescribed price,” and “for educational needs,” as its CM, industries minister and deputy CM have all said on the record. After the surrender entered the legislature’s record in December 2024, the BJP’s 2026 rerun leaves that fact out and calls it a scandal anyway. The BJP-led Centre likes paperwork when it suits it; this page of the paperwork it has chosen not to read.