While You’re There, Ask Eagleton Resort to Cough Up Rs 982 Crore Penalty, Karnataka BJP Taunts Congress

Bengaluru: Alleging that the resort where Congress legislators are holed up owes Rs 982 crore to the Karnataka government as penalty in a land encroachment case, the state BJP on Saturday asked the Congress leaders to collect the amount and use it to waive farm loans.

"Eagleton resort owe GOK Rs 998cr Penalty amount in land encroachment case. Now that Congress Party will spend time in resort we request 'Maryada Purushothama' Sri.@siddaramaiah,@DKShivakumar &@dineshgrao to collect this money while u return U can use it for farmer loan waiver (sic)," Karnataka BJP said in a tweet, citing media reports.

After the crucial legislature party meeting on Friday, the Congress had shifted all its MLAs to Eagleton Resort to "escape" allegedly from the BJP's "onslaught". Recently, during the assembly session at Belagavi district, replying to a question raised by JD(S) leader AT Ramaswamy, revenue minister RV Deshpande had said the state government will take all measures to collect Rs 982 crore from the resort for encroaching upon 77 acres of government land.

Member of Parliament from Bengaluru (rural) DK Suresh, who was reportedly overseeing the stay of the MLAs at the resort, told reporters that the encroachment case was before the court and the facilities were not being provided for free.

"During the Siddaramaiah government itself, about 20 acre was got released and taken position after measurement. It (the case) was before the court. The resort will not provide us facilities for free," he said in response to a question on the issue.

He said the party will pay the money and submit a payment bill if anybody wants it to do that.

It was at this very resort that the Income Tax department had conducted raids on senior Congress leader and minister DK Shivakumar in 2017, when he was hosting 44 Gujarat MLAs to prevent the BJP from allegedly "poaching" them during the Rajya Sabha polls in that state.