The Supreme Court agreed to examine a plea to revive a land-grab case against B.S. Yediyurappa on a day he was sworn in as Karnataka chief minister. The BJP leader’s co-accused in the case is senior Congress politician D.K. Shivakumar.

Yediyurappa is accused of de-notifying a government plot in Bangalore in 2010, when he was chief minister, to help political rival Shivakumar occupy it illegally.

The original petitioner, Kabballe Gowda, had withdrawn the land-grab plea in February this year. The Samaj Parivartna Samudaya, an NGO represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, has sought reopening of the case.

The NGO, which had moved an intervention application in the original case, has argued that Gowda withdrew his plea without informing it.

“How can it (withdrawal of the plea) be done behind the (NGO’s) back?” the bench of Justices Arun Mishra and M.R. Shah told Yediyurappa’s counsel, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, on Friday.

Another senior advocate, Abhishek Singhvi, representing Shivakumar, endorsed Rohatgi’s argument that the case could not be reopened at the “instance of an intervener”.

But the court said: “Any person can come before the court in a corruption case.”

“How can an intervener be allowed to reopen the case, which is purely a private complaint?” Singhvi argued. But the bench said: “We will hear it on some other day.”

Yediyurappa had had to resign as chief minister in 2011 after being accused of corrupt land deals, and spent 25 days in jail custody.