"I have prayed to Lord Nanjundeshwara (Hindu god Shiva’s another name) for more than an hour recently and pledge in his name that henceforth I will not transgress boundaries of law in land allotment," the embattle chief minister told reporters in this coastal town, about 350 km from Bangalore.

Yeddyurappa also said the state cabinet will decide Thursday on entrusting to a retired Supreme Court judge the probe into all land deals in the last 10 years.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s first chief minister in south India on Wednesday faced fresh charges of favouring his sister and her in-laws in allotment of sites belonging to the Bangalore Development Authority.

The BDA, a state government agency, develops residential plots and allots to people after a time-consuming procedure. It sets apart a number of sites in each area it develops for the chief minister to allot at his discretion but only to people who do not own residential properties in Bangalore.

Yeddyurappa has acknowledged that one of his sons, B.Y. Raghavenda, now a Lok Sabha member, was allotted a residential site on a preferential basis even though he already owned residential properties in the capital.

Opposition Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) have mounted pressure on Yeddyurappa to quit as he allotted the site to his son based on a false affidavit filed by him.

It is not only Yeddyurappa who is facing charges of favouring family members and relatives.

State BJP chief K.S. Eshwarappa is also facing the heat as his son got about two acres of land for his company in Dobbespet near Bangalore in a short period of 28 days of applying for it in January last year when Eshwarappa was energy minister.

Yeddyuappa acknowledged the land allotment but asserted no law has been flouted.
He advanced the same argument last week to defend allotment of two acres of prime industrial land at the Jigani industrial estate on Bangalore’s outskirts to his two sons for their company to manufacture automobile components.

In Bangalore, Yeddyurappa’s predecessor H.D. Kumaraswamy of the JD-S demanded that all BDA sites given to people who already owned residential property in Bangalore be taken back by the government.

"Our objection is not to Raghavendra being allotted a BDA site but to the false affidavit (saying) that he does not own residential property in Bangalore," Kumaraswamy said.

"This false statement could cost him the Lok Sabha membership," he claimed.

Raghavenda is the BJP’s Lok Sabha member from Shimoga, the home district of Yeddyurappa.