It is extraordinary that, a few days ago, Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa did not put in his papers on first hearing of the findings of the inquiry by the state Lokayukta, Justice N. Santosh Hegde, a retired judge of the Supreme Court who enjoys a high reputation for insisting on probity, into illegal mining operations and other misdemeanours. The chief minister was holidaying in Mauritius when the core elements of the report leaked to the media.
Instead of showing contrition, Mr Yeddyurappa’s cohorts offered the hilarious argument that the Lokayukta report had lost its “sanctity” as some of its contents had been leaked. Worse, Justice Hegde’s phones began to be tapped in a crude attempt to seek to browbeat him. Making things utterly low-grade, the CM brazenly brushed aside demands for his resignation, insisting he had majority support in the Assembly, even after the Lokayukta’s voluminous 25,000-page report was duly presented to the state government on Wednesday. This marks a new low in the country’s public life. It would be a saving grace if indications firm up that the CM has indeed offered to resign in response to the BJP parliamentary board “advising” him on Thursday to go.
Fingers have been pointed at chief ministers before on the ground of corruption. But in no case had a leading statutory institution recommended a chief minister’s prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Nor had a CM simply ignore public calls to quit even after being indicted. Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad Yadav was sent to jail when a CBI court allowed his prosecution, but prior to that he did not peremptorily overlook the evidence against him and his associates in the fodder scam. He vacated the chief minister’s chair (although taking care to replace himself with wife Rabri Devi, with party MLAs providing the stamp of approval). More recently, Ashok Chavan, Maharashtra’s Congress chief minister, “walked” when asked by his party to do so when the Adarsh flats scandal broke, although the matter is still being investigated. Alas, Mr Yeddyurappa’s instinct has been to take a different approach.
Karnataka is the only state in South India where the BJP has won a government. In that sense, Karnataka spelt a breakthrough paradigm for the party. For its first CM in the South to be indicted for deep-going corruption which contributed, to a considerable extent, to the state exchequer losing about `6,000 crores in a space of about four years, is hardly an advertisement for the Hindutva party, whose bold claim was that it was a political formation “with a difference”. It is noteworthy that it is not the CM alone who has been indicted, but four of his Cabinet colleagues as well, including the unprepossessing Reddy brothers who are mining magnates. If the CM was himself engaged in corrupt practices, as alleged, he would naturally be in no position to check others. The fact that the Lokayukta has also swivelled his attention to former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular), and the wife of Congress MP Anil Lad, in the list of wrongdoers does little to soften the blow to the chief minister and his party. It would be naïve to underplay the fact that the crimes committed against the state are of an extremely serious and criminal nature, as suggested by Justice Hegde. It is time the BJP made it amply clear that it would replace Mr Yeddyurappa for the sake of justice and for the sake of democracy, and not to seize the so-called high moral ground in order to shame the UPA government at the Centre so that it is enabled to mount an offensive against the latter.