'We appreciate his contribution, but the scams are serious'

BJP national president Nitin Gadkari and other top leaders are said to have told the State BJP leaders who were lobbying in favour of Yeddyurappa: “We have respect for Chief Minister B S Yeddryuappa as he is the man who brought the party to power in Karnataka. But we can’t excuse him for the scandals he is charged with.”

Desperate to continue in the post, Yeddyurappa has sent two dozens of leaders, including party MPs, to meet the senior leaders L K Advani, Nitin Gadkari, Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu, Sushma Swaraj and Rajnath Singh.

Home Minister R Ashoka, Higher Education Minister V S Acharya, Medical Education Minister A Ramdas, Irrigation Minister Basavaraj Bommai, PWD Minister C M Udasi, MPs, Chandre Gowda, Suresh Angadi, Shivakumar Udasi, Umesh Katti, Rajya Sabha Member Prabhakar Kore, were camped here over the past two days to persuade the central leadership against removal of Yeddyurappa.

During the meeting, some of the top rung leaders wanted to know the identity of the “mole” in the Chief Minister’s family who had passed on to the media details of the bank pass books of his sons and his son-in-law that were published in the media, pointing out that such confidetial information was available only to the account holder.

Producing bundle of documents related to the land scams that took place in the previous governments, the leaders tried to convince that the Chief Minister was innocent of the charges levelled against him.

Gadkari is learnt to have told them that Yeddyurappa was an important leader of the BJP and the party had acknowledged his struggle to bring the party to power in the State.

“However, the series of scandals involved his family members put the party in tight spot as it is fighting against the UPA Government in 2G spectrum scandal,” the party president is understood to have told them.

When an young MP from Karnataka tried to defend the Chief Minister’s family members regarding the money transactions, an angry Gadkari snubbed him saying: “Don’t teach me about bank transaction details as I have in-depth knowledge about this issue.”

Gadkari believed to have asked Yeddyurappa’s supporters to meet Arun Jaitley. Though  they met Jaitely and Venkaiah Naidu separately, they were unable to impress them, it is learnt. 

Sources said the central BJP leaders have told the State leaders that for long they had been receiving a welter of complaints about the questionable deals of the chief minister’s family members. However, they had decided to act only after reports about the deals began appearing in the media.