Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, while announcing the government’s decision to hand over the probe into the illegal lottery scam to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), questioned the Opposition’s “moral right” in seeking a probe by the Central agency.
He said the Opposition BJP and JD(S) had not “dared” to hand over even a single case to the CBI from 2006 to 2013, including the “multimillion-crore illegal mining scam” and the Rs. 150-crore bribery charge levelled against the then Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy.
“They even dubbed the CBI as ‘Chor Bachao Institution’ and ‘Congress Bureau of Investigation’. They are now questioning the moral right of the Congress government,” he said.
Clarifying that the government had “nothing to hide” and there was “no need to protect anybody”, Mr. Siddaramaiah said the government had acted immediately after a private news channel aired a sting operation involving senior police officers. A probe by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was ordered and a Superintendent of Police rank official suspended immediately. An IGP-level officer was suspended after getting the interim report of the CID, he said.
While the government was waiting for the final report of the CID to act against all those involved in the scam, the Opposition parties started behaving “irresponsibly”, suspected involvement of the Chief Minister and the Home Minister, he said. “Finally, we decided to hand over the case to the CBI to bring out the truth,” he said.
