Now, Cong plans to move its flock to 'safe locations'

After the JD (S), the Congress is now planning to shift its corporators-elect to different locations fearing poaching by the BJP.

At an interaction with the media in Bengaluru on Friday, Congress legislator S T Somashekar (Yeshwantpur) said the corporators would be shifted to different locations, dividing them into four groups based on their jurisdictional Lok Sabha constituencies where their ward falls.

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is spread across four Lok Sabha constituencies - Benguluru North, South, Central and Rural.

The Congress has 76 corporators. Already, 13 JD (S) corporators-elect and six independents have shifted to resorts in Kerala.

Somashekar alleged that one of the party’s woman corporators-elect recently got a call, apparently from a BJP leader, offering her Rs 2.5 crore if she quit the Congress and joined the BJP.

Somashekar said the corporator-elect had recorded the call and it would be released to the media shortly. The BJP leader apparently also told the corporator that she could contest on a BJP ticket again and the party would work for her. However, he did not reveal the name of the BJP leader at the interaction.

Somashekar made the accusations in the presence of Ministers Ramalinga Reddy, Dinesh Gundu Rao and Krishna Byre Gowda.

“The BJP leaders are experts in horse-trading. Between 2008 and 2010, under Operation Lotus, they got 15 to 20 legislators from the Opposition parties to resign in order to increase their tally in the Assembly,” Somashekar said.

He said the Congress MLAs and those defeated during the 2013 Assembly polls had been asked to keep a watch on the party corporators elected from the wards coming under their constituencies.

Ashoka?

Later speaking to this newspaper, Somashekar said it was BJP leader R Ashoka who tried to lure the Congress corporator-elect from Chowdeshwari ward.

The party leaders decided to shift all the corporators-elect to a safe location in view of the BJP trying to poach them, he added.

Sources in the Congress said five ministers from Bengaluru were scheduled to hold a meeting on Saturday to finalise the plan to shift the party corporators-elect to a safe location, mostly likely to resorts on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

‘This isn’t Shivamogga’

Somashekar was quite outspoken at the press conference and did not spare even Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa. To a query on Thimmappa expressing his reservation about the Congress-JD(S) alliance in the BBMP Council, Somashekar said, “The Speaker should abstain from speaking about any political party... He should be apolitical. This is Bengaluru, not Shivamogga,” he said, referring to Thimmappa’s native district in the Malnad region.