H T SOMASHEKAR REDDY Vs. GOVERNMENT OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) PETITIONER who is a retired chief engineer, has filed this petition as public interest litigation challenging the validity of agreement dated 3-4-1997, Annexure-A entered into between the government of karnataka and nandi infrastructure corridor enterprises limited, arrayed as respondents 1 and 2 (for short, 'respondents 1 and 2 respectively' ). the agreement has been executed by the secretary, public works department as an authorised officer of respondent 1 under article 299 (1) of the Constitution of india, for and on behalf of governor of karnataka. by this agreement the second respondent is authorised to construct and provide infrastructure corridor project between Bangalore and mysore ('the project", for short), consisting of residential, industrial plants, water treatment and other infrastructure developments as set out in the 4th para of the preamble in the said agreement. According to the petitioner the agreement entered into between respondents 1 and 2 is detrimental to the people of the area and against the Constitution of india and laws in force in the country. Illegality of the agreement being of such magnitude that if it is not challenged by the citizens of the state it would result in disastrous consequences affecting agriculture, horticulture, environment and pollution of the state. The people of the state are likely to be affected generally with the implementation of the project. the persons to be affected are so large in number that they cannot individually approach this court for relief. Therefore, the petition be entertained as public interest litigation.

(2.) TO appreciate the contentions raised between the parties and for its proper adjudication, it is necessary to refer to the factual matrix of the dispute as stated in the petition and derived from the official record produced before us in extenso. The same is: bangalore and Mysore are two very important cities of the state of Karnataka and are connected by existing Bangalore-mysore highway sh-17 which was built over 100 years ago. With the passage of time and modernisation of technology, the traffic on the roads has increased and heavy and fast moving vehicles have come in place of the slow moving traffic at that time. These two cities have been exposed to shock of industrialisation, heavy development and over-population. In order to meet the ends of the industry, and transportation, the state of Karnataka invited tenders for designing, constructing, maintaining and operating of an express highway between Bangalore and Mysore on 28th september, 1988. In response to the said advertisement only one bid was received with certain stringent conditions which were not acceptable to the government. The said conditions were:

(3.) DURING early 1995 in order to establish sister state relationship with the state of massachusetts, usa and state of karnataka, a mou dated 20th february, 1995 was entered between these two states. In the said mou it was agreed by the government of Karnataka to extend support for development of Bangalore-mysore expressway provided commercial viability, competitiveness and feasibility of the project was established to the satisfaction of the state government. Second respondent submitted a project report for the consideration of the first respondent.