As Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa came under attack by the Opposition for alleged irregularities in granting the mining licences after the “leaked” contents of yet to be released state Lokyayukta’s report, the BJP in a counter offensive has targeted three former CMs and Union government during governor’s rule for granting far more number of licences “without” MoEF clearance.
Though the prime target of BJP was former CM H.D. Kumaraswamy of the JD(S), who is in the forefront of a campaign against Mr Yeddyurappa, the ruling party in the state has equally trained its guns on external affairs minister S.M. Krishna and Dharam Singh, in a bid to counter the Congress attack as well, claiming that a total of 106 licences had been granted during the tenure of the three CMs “without” the cases being referred to Centre for clearance from the ministry of environment and forest (MoEF).
A document compiled by BJP on entire mining episode in Karnataka since Mr Krishna’s period, has alleged that even during the spells of Central rule in between, 22 mining licences were granted by the Governor “without” referring them to MoEF.
The document stated that the maximum of 47 licences were granted without MoEF clearance by the Kumaraswamy government, followed by 43 and 16 respectively by two Congress CMs; Dharam Singh and Krishna. The Yeddyurappa government had granted 24 such licences since he took over, the BJP said. The BJP had also produced relevant documents, showing how Mr Kumara-swamy had given “clearance” to a mining company within two hours with special instructions to officials concerned that the file be cleared with “no loss of time”.