As Yeddyurappa reached Delhi late Friday evening, the leadership was in no mood to lower its offensive against the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre over the mega 2G scam. But the credibility of that offensive was beginning to be weighed down the myriad land scams that have rocked the Yeddyurappa leadership in Karnataka.
Aware that the central leadership could consider easing him out, an embattled Yeddyurappa sought to undo the damage he had done to himself by asking his kith and kin to surrender lands allotted to them in questionable ways. This he did just before he boarded the flight to Delhi on Friday evening to save his troubled leadership.
Upon arrival in the national capital, Yeddyurappa appeared combative, in no mood to oblige the party leadership, let alone the Opposition. “Who are they (Opposition) to ask me to resign. They are worried because of rapid development in the state”, he asked.
Digging in his heels, Yeddyurappa gave a factional angle to the whole crisis that has engulfed his leadership.
A conspiracy
He is believed to have told the central leadership that the whole crisis was a conspiracy of his detractors in the state unit of the party. Apparently, he is armed with “evidence” to show that senior leader Ananth Kumar and his supporters were deeply involved in the messy affairs.
Apparently, the chief minister is making it known to the central leadership that he was no mood to oblige with his resignation. The defiance on his part is said to be his way of communicating to the leadership that if he was to be removed, the party might lose its first government in the South.
The central leadership itself is a divided house over the issue. While leaders like L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj want Yeddyurappa to step down, party chief Nitin Gadkari and Rajnath Singh continue to stand by him. Also, there is no alternative identified so far should Yeddyurappa be sacked. There is a view that if the party’s campaign against UPA over the 2G issue did not yield the desired political outcome next week, it might provide a reprieve to Yeddyurappa by default.
Late Friday night, the core committee of the state BJP met in the national capital under Gadkari’s leadership where the chief minister and other prominent state leaders were present. But this meeting was not about considering any leadership change, said party sources. Others present were state BJP chief K S Eshwarappa and Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister Jagadish Shettar.
No surgery
In view of this, a section of the BJP’s top leadership believes “there is no surgery in the offing”, a clear indication that it would not want the party high command to act in haste to replace him.
“Replacement will not be easy since he is one of the few leaders in the state with a mass base”, sources said, adding that Yeddyurappa was “in a combative mood and not at all receptive to the idea of a change”.
Although the Nagpur outfit has not fully revealed its mind on the Yeddyurappa issue, RSS Joint General Secretary Suresh Soni has discussed with BJP chief Nitin Gadkari the land scam that Yeddyurappa and his sons are embroiled in.
With the Congress setting “an example” by forcing the resignations of Ashok Chavan in Maharashtra, sacking Suresh Kalmadi as Congress Parliamentary Party Secretary and getting rid of the DMK’s A Raja as Telecom Minister, the BJP has come under pressure to clean its own house.
Land surrender
During the day, Yeddyurappa’s family members and relatives surrendered four BDA sites and three Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) plots. Yeddyurappa’s son and Lok Sabha MP B Y Raghavendra on Thursday evening forwarded a letter to the BDA, surrendering a 50X80 feet plot allotted to him in upmarket RMV Extension.
Raghavendra was allotted the site under the chief minister’s discretionary quota after he produced a false declaration that he possessed no property elsewhere in the city. Raghavendra paid Rs 8 lakh to the BDA while the market value of the site is Rs 3 crore.
Yeddyurappa’s sister B S Premamma, who was allotted a 40X60 feet plot in HSR III Stage under the chief minister’s discretionary quota, also surrendered the site, BDA sources said. Two other relatives of Yeddyurappa, S C Ashok and M Deepa, also gave up their BDA sites, the sources added. The duo were allotted adjacent 40X60 BDA plots at Chandra Layout.
Raghavendra and his brother B Y Vijayendra surrendered a two-acre prime industrial plot at Jigani Industrial Estate to the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board . The plot was allotted to Fluid Power Technologies, a firm owned by Raghavendra and Vijayendra when Yeddyurappa was deputy chief minister in 2007. Yeddyurappa’s daughter Umadevi also gave up two plots of industrial land allotted to her near Harohalli for her firm Candor Business Solutions. However, the issue of alleged illegal denotification of land remains untouched.