Bengaluru, 14 March

The Karnataka Cabinet on Thursday decided to set up a Special Investigation Team to probe the police sub-inspector recruitment scam. The decision to form a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was taken on the recommendations of Justice B Veerappa Commission.

Justice Veerappa recently submitted his report on the scam and said that 113 people were involved in it including government officers, employees and some middlemen. Though some people did not respond to the summons, they gave statements in public but did not appear before the commission, Karnataka Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda told reporters.

Since the commission does not have power to summon them forcibly, it said that statements of such people should be obtained through another probe, the minister said. “Based on the suggestions of the Commission, the Cabinet has decided to set up an SIT,” Gowda said.

According to him, already the Crime Investigation Department (CID) is probing 17 cases, since the commission highlighted more points that need a probe, an SIT was recommended. Gowda clarified that there was no proposal to stop the investigation by the CID as it would lead to confusions.

The PSI recruitment exam was conducted in October 2021. Large scale irregularities in it forced the government to cancel the examination. Several police officers including ADGP Amrit Paul were arrested.

Other details also emerged from the cabinet meeting, said sources. The Karnataka cabinet expressed its resolve to build a statue of ‘Goddess Bhuvaneshwari’, a symbol of Karnataka, on the Vidhana Soudha premises at a cost of Rs 23 crore. A theme based garden will also be developed around the statue, sources said.

It also decided to develop a tree park on 60-65 acres of NGF land in East Bengaluru near KR Puram. The proposed tree park will have a bicycle track, walking track and a playground. It will be developed at an estimated cost of Rs 11 crore, the sources said, adding that each acre in that area costs about Rs 25 crore.

The Cabinet has also decided to spend Rs 40 crore to upgrade the Primary Health Centres (PHC) by supplying them equipment, "which were not given to them in the last three to four years", sources said.