Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani, on a ‘yatra’ for good governance and to campaign against corruption, reached Bangalore on Sunday – on the same day the state’s minister for industries, M Nirani, was named with his brother in a First Information Report registered by the police in a land grab case.
Advani only addressed a public meeting, where he took on the issue of corruption head-on and conceded that in order to fight it, a political movement had to ensure there was no corruption within. A statement greeted with cheers from the crowd and interpreted as the BJP finally shrugging off former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa, in jail after arrest for alleged misuse of office in a case of land denotification.
Another former party minister, Gali Janardan Reddy, is facing charges of corruption in an illegal mining case. Home minister R Ashoka is facing graft charges; the Lokayukta court had ordered a probe against him on a private complaint alleging his involvement, too, in illegal denotification of land. Party MLA Y Sampangi was sent to jail by a local court, which cancelled his bail after finding him guilty of threatening witnesses in a corruption case against him.
Then, former minister Krishnaiah Setty, accused with Yeddyurappa in a land scam case, is behind bars. Another former minister, K Subramanya Naidu, currently at a Mumbai hospital, is under custody in a land scam case.
In Bangalore, Advani cancelled his scheduled press conference. After addressing a public meeting, he opted to rest, thus avoiding questions. However, he did say in his speech at the meeting that he thought Sadananda Gowda, the man who replaced Yeddyurappa, was well-equipped and competent to give Karnataka good governance.
This is somewhat ironic, as Gowda was elected by the BJP legislature party after he was selected by the party leadership in Delhi for promising to ‘protect’ Yeddyurappa when the latter for forced to step down earlier this year. It is known that party president Nitin Gadkari took his time to ask Yeddyurappa to step down from office although the party’s legal brains advised him to do so (and revoke denotification of the land deal) if he wanted to avoid going to jail. Gadkari equivocated on the Yeddyurappa issue for nearly a week before asking him to quit after Lok Ayukta Santhosh Hegde gave his report on mining irregularities in the state. Party insiders said he would not have quit even then, had it not been for the pressure from Advani.
While Advani is trying hard to regain the ground lost by the party, the ball is now in Gowda’s court. He has the unhappy task of reconciling Yeddyurappa’s interests and ensuring the rash of action on corruption does not cost him his government. In the 224-member assembly, the BJP has 120 MLAs, though the status of 11 is disputed.
