The Bharatiya Janata Party said on Saturday the judicial remand of the former Karnataka Chief Minister, B.S. Yeddyurappa, by the Lokayukta court in Bangalore in a land deal case was “expected and we are not at all surprised. The party will wait for the completion of the full judicial process against him.”
BJP general secretary in charge of Karnataka Dharmendra Pradhan told The Hindu here that while the party expected Mr. Yeddyurappa, who was replaced from the Chief Ministership following allegations of corruption, to face the judicial process on his own, the party, on its part, “will facilitate and cooperate for the law to take its course. We will do that.”
Mr. Pradhan said the party had been seriously maintaining that whenever judicial or constitutional authorities expressed their views on some issue “we have to respect it and go by that.” The party expected Mr. Yeddyurappa to fight the case legally. He denied there was any setback for the organisation in view of the development.
BJP spokesman J.P. Nadda said: “It is a legal issue. We will certainly fight the issue legally. We will be there legally but the BJP will adopt zero tolerance towards corruption.” The moment Mr. Yeddyurappa's name appeared in the Lokayukta report the party decided to seek his resignation on moral grounds.
He took on the Congress by stating that the latter had no moral right to talk or comment on the issue of corruption as it was “deeply entrenched in corruption.” The Congress leaders were involved in many scams but the party had not taken any action against them, he alleged and cited the Goa mining scam, the 2G spectrum allocation scam, the Adarsh Housing Scam and the alleged irregularities in holding the Commonwealth Games last year in Delhi.
The “inaction” by the Congress or the UPA government in these scams “clearly shows that the Congress and the UPA are not serious on corruption.” But the BJP had always played a pro-active role in fighting corruption and would continue doing so.
The former Prime Minister and Janata Dal (Secular) president, H.D. Deve Gowda, told The Hindu over telephone from Bangalore that though he did not want to comment on the judicial remand of the individual, he welcomed the increased judicial activism, following the assumption of office by Chief Justice of India Justice S.H. Kapadia. Such a development was important for democracy, Mr. Gowda said urging the political parties to do some introspection on how to save democracy, as various institutions had failed to deliver.
Congress spokesman Abishek Singhvi said the judicial remand of Mr. Yeddyurappa in the corruption case spoke volumes of the morality practised by the BJP, which was constantly preaching. It was the “obduracy” of the BJP that prevented similar cases in the party from going down the same slippery slope.
“The court order against the former BJP Chief Minister is clearly yet another reiteration of BJP's very severe indictments.”
Another Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said it was ironical that Mr. Yeddyuruppa was fighting for bail in a corruption case at a time when the BJP was undertaking an anti-corruption yatra. “Perhaps it would have been far more appropriate if the anti-corruption yatra would have been first undertaken in Karnataka, Uttarakhand, and Punjab, where BJP Ministers and functionaries have been indicted on charges of corruption,” he said.
Senior BJP leader and Karnataka's special representative here, V.S. Dhananjay Kumar, who met Mr. Yeddyurappa a few hours before he was sent to judicial custody, said the latter was confident that he would come out clean in the case and he had committed no wrong. The party respected the judicial process and Mr. Yeddyurappa would fight the case legally, he said.\
