Coming out strongly in support of Karnataka Governor H.R. Bhardwaj, who granted sanction to prosecute Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, the Congress on Saturday – both at the party and governmental level – lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for deliberately disrupting normal life in the State.
“The Governor is a Constitutional authority. Under the Constitution, he has discretion to decide such matters,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, adding, “He has exercised that discretion over the last month.” Anyone who was aggrieved, he said, could seek a legal remedy.
Attacking the BJP for indulging in a political blame game, Mr. Singhvi stressed that the Governor had exercised the constitutional powers which he had been entrusted with and the remedy, if any, lay in the courts and not in political allegations against the Congress or precipitating a “deliberate breakdown” in law and order, which he characterised as “by the BJP, for the BJP in a BJP- ruled state.”
Earlier in the day, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram issued a similar statement criticising the BJP for attacking Mr. Bhardwaj: indeed, the Home Minister asked the Karnataka government and the BJP to maintain law and order.
In Mumbai, Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily, too, was reported supporting Mr. Bhardwaj's action. “Nobody can escape the rule of law,” he told journalists, adding, “there is no exemption for any Minister or Chief Minister. When there is a question of corruption, the Governor has no other option but to grant (sanction for) prosecution.”
The strong Congress reaction comes in the wake of BJP's Karnataka bandh on Saturday. Vehicles went off the road, commercial establishments downed shutters and schools and colleges closed in response to the bandh call, to protest against the Governor according sanction for prosecution of the Chief Minister.
Ekta Yatra
The Congress also took a tough line on the BJP's Ekta Yatra to Jammu and Kashmir to hoist the tricolour in Srinagar's Lal Chowk.
“We have said it earlier, and we are saying it again,” Mr. Singhvi said in a statement, stressing, “whosoever, from any quarter, irrespective of ideology, religion, or political affiliation, tries to create any ambience of provocation, tension, or antagonism in Jammu and Kashmir is doing a great disservice to the nation and deserves to be condemned unequivocally.”