New home, new office, new party?

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A day after his official residence on Race Course road — a house he considered lucky — was raided by officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa on Thursday decided to move out lock, stock and barrel, to his private home in Dollar’s Colony.

Far more significantly, the embattled leader may have taken the first steps towards launching a new political outfit by opening an office in Malleswaram on Friday, on the very day that his one time benefactor and central leader Arun Jaitley arrives in the city to mend fences with an increasingly angry Yeddyurappa.

Sources close to BSY said that in part, the office would be a place for him to meet his supporters. But insiders said that in removing the party symbol outside the former BJP office, and putting up photographs of himself with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, former premier Atal Behari Vajpayee and Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi, he was sending out an unqualified message of his continuing anger against his parent party.

The fact that he had overstayed in the official residence for six months following his resignation in August 2011 was also a factor. The public works department had asked him to pay Rs 32 lakh as rent for seven months.