The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to launch a probe into the bribery allegation against former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa in the allotment of mining leases.The court directed the CBI to complete its investigations and submit a report by August 3.
Meanwhile, the powerful Lingayat community leader is preparing to fight the legal battle and also fight it out within his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Senior leaders of the Karnataka BJP and Yeddyurappa’s political advisors say the party leadership must not single out Yeddyurappa. They argued for Yeddyurappa saying S Ban-garappa, the former chief minister of Karnataka, was in active politics even after allegations of corruption were levelled against him in the early 1990s and the probe was on, and that former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati was also in politics and the Tamil Nadu chief minister was at the top post though there are allegations of corruption against her.
“I am confident that I will come out clean. I will get justice from the CBI probe,” Yeddyurappa told reporters in the temple town of Nanjangud, about 160 km from Bangalore, soon after the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to probe the allegations that the Prerana Trust, managed by members of his immediate family, received huge donations from the mining company favoured by him.
Present Karnataka chief minister D V Sadananda Gowda, however, declined to react to the apex court order. “I can comment only after going through the court order,” he said.
Yeddyurappa, who became the BJP’s first chief minister in south India on May 30 2008, had to quit on July 31, 2011, after the then Lokayukta, N Santosh Hegde, indicted him over mining bribery charges.
“Yeddyurappa is the only BJP leader who has been winning elections for the party since 1999. So, it is the party leadership that has to decide if they want to allow false allegations and political conspiracies to affect them. Yeddyurappa had got a clean chit from the Karnataka High Court and the same case is now before the Supreme Court. We are confident that Yeddyurappa will win this political and legal battle,” said a senior BJP leader.
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The Karnataka High Court had set aside the Lokayukta report in March and since then he had been mounting pressure on the BJP central leaders to re-instate him. Before ordering a CBI probe, the apex court accepted the recommendation of the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) report of April 20, which had recommended a probe into the bribery allegations against Yeddyurappa by an independent agency like the CBI.
The CEC report recommended investigation in three cases. These involved the sale of land to South West Mining Company (SWML), a subsidiary of JSW Steel after its land use was changed from agriculture to non-agriculture (residential) and the link between Rs 10 crore donation to Prerana Educational Society by SWML for alleged receipt of illegal minerals by JSW Steel Ltd.
The committee, in its recommendation in the third case, sought an investigation to find out if there was a link between payment of Rs 2.5 crore to Bhagat Homes Private Ltd and Rs 3.5 crore to Dhavalgiri Property Developers Ltd and the grant of mining leases to Praveen Chandra during Yeddyurappa’s tenure.
The CEC wanted the investigating agency to look into the allegation that there was a quid pro quo in these payments and allotment of mining leases to Chandra.
In Bangalore, the opposition Congress and Janata Dal-Secular welcomed the apex court order. The Congress even demanded that the BJP government should step down. “The BJP regime has lost moral authority to continue in office. It should quit immediately,” leader of the opposition in the Karnataka assembly and Congress leader Siddaramaiah told reporters.
Former chief minister and JDS Lok Sabha member H D Kumaraswamy said, “This will be a lesson to all those misusing power.”
Yeddyurappa, who claims the support of around 70 of BJP’s 120 legislators in the 225-member Karnataka Assembly, is meeting his supporters in Bangalore late Friday to decide on the next course of action in their campaign to unseat Gowda.
Around 40 legislators, including a few ministers, supporting Yeddyuruppa has since the last two days been demanding the immediate convening of legislature party meeting to take on Gowda. They had launched a signature campaign for the meeting following the leak of Gowda’s March 26 letter to BJP chief Nitin Gadkari suggesting that the cabinet ministers supporting Yeddyurappa be dropped for indulging in anti-party activities.