BJP's anti-corruption campaign ignores K'taka

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will start a nationwide campaign against corruption, but Karnataka — where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power — does not feature in its agenda. The list of venues for NDA’s Bhrashtachar Virodhi Mahasangram has been planned for 12 cities, including Chennai and Hyderabad, but Bangalore has been omitted.

Top sources in the NDA said Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa was not very keen to host the anti-corruption rally in his state and told the BJP central leadership that the party should concentrate on corruption in Delhi as ‘things in Karnataka are fine’.

The official reason offered by the BJP is that party workers will be busy in the preparations for the upcoming panchayat and taluk elections. Senior leaders of the coalition, who were present at today’s meeting at NDA convener Sharad Yadav’s residence, also said that BJP brass did not want Bangalore to be included in the list of proposed venues for holding the all-India campaign.

The Yeddyurappa government is facing charges of nepotism and land scams. The Karnataka chief minister had recently come under scanner after it was found that he had illegally transferred government land to his family members.

Several other important state leaders, including state BJP chief ES Eshwarappa, were named in the scam. Soon after the crisis broke out, Yeddyurappa’s family members returned the land holdings and the chief minister ordered a retired judge to look into similar land allotments since 1996.

The present crisis in Karnataka was the fourth since the BJP government was formed. Although the core group of the BJP had decided to replace Yeddyurappa from the top post, the decision could not be implemented because the central leadership feared that the state government might collapse if Yeddyurappa was removed.

The Congress has launched an attack on the BJP on the Karnataka issue. On Monday, party president Sonia Gandhi slammed the BJP. She said: “Can the BJP make the same claim in Karnataka where corruption is rampant? Let us not forget that it was during the BJP-led NDA that a senior minister resigned on the defence scam being exposed.”

The NDA campaign will start from Delhi on December 22, and cover Ludhiana, Rohtak, Jaipur, Lucknow, Patna, Bhubneshwar, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai.