Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has charged that JD (S) leader H D Kumaraswamy was trying to blackmail police officers by dropping their names at press meets on the lottery scam.

Addressing the media on Tuesday, he said that Kumaraswamy wants police officers to stand at his doorstep the next day. However, he did not spell out as to why the former chief minister was doing so. “Such behaviour is common to the Gowda clan,” the chief minister said and added Deve Gowda had earlier branded CBI as Chor Bachao Institution, while the BJP had dubbed it as Congress Bureau of Investigation. But now Gowda has changed his perception on the agency, he sarcastically said.

“When Janardhana Reddy accused Kumaraswamy of accepting a bribe of Rs 150 crore from the mining lobby, why Gowda did not advise his son (Kumaraswamy was then chief minister) to hand over the case to the CBI. Was it putravyamoha?,” Siddaramaiah sought to know. Siddaramaiah charged that baseless allegations were hurled at him and the government by the father and son.

“Gowda has blamed me and Home Minister K G George of being involved in the scam without any evidence. It is the misfortune of the State that we should have had Gowda as the prime minister,” he said.

However, Kumaraswamy said that he did not drop names of officials with any intention except in the interest of the State. He said that during his tenure as chief minister when he was in Singapore to study the water treatment system there, Nice Managing Director Ashok Kheny took a special flight to meet him in Singapore. “I told him if he had any issue pertaining to BMIC he should meet me in Vidhana Soudha.”