When the rich and the powerful start taking pot shots at each other, it’s like the wild wild West. And I’m not talking about Gujarat. Or Himachal. Both of which are in churn. But here, right here, in pollbound Karnataka, the new game in town is how to dodge the bullet!
There’s the Janata Dal heir presumptive and former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy being attacked on his alleged involvement in a mining case he is accused of having made notes on a file when he was chief minister. And here was I thinking this is what all chief ministers are required to do. But hey! Is the irony lost on no-one, that, he’s now being tapped by the Congress’ power minister D.K.Shivakumar to turn accuser as Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s government prepares to fire a full volley at the BJP’s B.S.Yeddyurappa during the upcoming Belagavi session? A session, that I am certain will be as short as the Congress can make it!
BSY and his aide, Shobha Karandlaje, handled the power brief when he was chief minister. And the Congress is intent on raking up the issue of losses that run into several hundred crores. Rs 28,000 crores to be exact, says the legislative panel that looked into the irregularities. BSY, clearly, not exactly what one would call a hands-on administrator. Unlike his CM to PM counterpart, Narendra Modi, whose stint as three time chief minister of Gujarat was stellar. His track record of running Bharat? A work in progress.
It’s not that BSY doesn’t have a couple of aces up his sleeve. There’s Bhoopasandra shorthand for the complaint that the state BJP has formally filed against the chief minister with the state Anti-Corruption Bureau, accusing him of illegally denotifying land, resulting in a loss of Rs 300 crore to the Bengaluru Development Authority. And lest we forget, there’s a small army of BJP functionaries in the backroom who are collating all the omissions and commissions, real and imagined, that they can then, periodically, lay at the Congress government’s door in the run up the state polls in May 2018. It’s a BJP stratagem that was fine-tuned to perfection at the fag end of the Manmohan Singh government, 2.0., to reinforce the charge that here was a prime minister who looked the other way as the politicians skimmed the profits. It’s the perception a majority of our countrymen bought into, and it won the BJP the mandate to rule.
But the man who now lends himself to becoming this rather large target, is the chief minister’s close aide, Kelachandra Joseph George, the Bengaluru Development and Town Planning minister and self-made multi-millionaire who openly claims that he doesn’t need to get his hands dirty to get any wealthier than he is already. Mr George may lack the conversational social skills that mark out the other smooth-talking Congressmen in the chief minister’s circle, but he is a canny survivor. And my gut tells me, in this game of feint and thrust, Mr. George’s fencing skills are unparalleled. And he hasn’t even been tested yet.
The crux of the BJP’s argument in calling for George’s resignation stem from the Congress’ past track record on being seen to do the ‘right thing’ at the centre. Shashi Tharoor quit as junior foreign minister. Suresh Kalmadi quit over the Commonwealth Games as did Ashok Chavan on the building scandal. And N.D.Tiwari, Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh! I could go on. Anyone who was being investigated, was given no choice but to quit. That's no longer the case.
There was little surprise therefore that the K.J.George who put in his papers when he was home minister at the time that the M.K.Ganapathi case was being investigated by the local CID, refuses to do so now. The BJP, if one recalls, had been equally vociferous on George stepping down when IAS officer D.K. Ravi had taken his own life.
If George had remained in his post then, he could have been seen as having interfered in the Ganapathi probe. Today, George, the minister, is in charge of the city of Bengaluru. Not the police, not the CID.
And if the Supreme Court has charged the CBI with investigating the suspicious circumstances under which the DySP took his own life, to ascertain whether or not there was a cover-up, whether police did or did not get rid of the officer’s suicide note as the family believes they did, and how far one could take the video at face value where Ganapathi names George and two of his superiors as being responsible if anything happened to him as acceptable, admissible evidence of abetment to suicide, then a Bengaluru Development minister is hardly likely to influence the course of the investigation being conducted by a body that operates at the central government’s behest.
The COD gave George a clean chit. The CBI? Will it be the proverbial gun held to his head, but not fired, until polls near?
Right or wrong, this is not a case of ill-gotten wealth or on the face of it, corruption. Although, many in the nod and wink brigade, say that no police posting ever goes through, unless notes of varying dimensions, depending on the post you are vying for, change hands; and that everyone, up and down the ladder gets a cut. All the way up to the top.
By that token, how is the BJP going to take the argument forward? I am confused. Ganapathi was under investigation for fake encounters and charges of corruption, and it was common knowledge that he had approached his superiors and the minister himself for a better posting. Now if he killed himself, because he didn’t get the posting he wanted, or was in fact, going to face the ignominy of being demoted, would that mean, that no bribes were offered, that no money changed hands?
Or, conversely, that bribes were offered, but were rejected? What could George be held responsible for? For not meeting Ganapathi? For not giving him the posting he wanted? And is he still the third accused or the main accused?
As polls near for Himachal and Gujarat, and the tu-tu-main-main becomes a shrill cacophony, as the Patidar icon Hardik nine months short of being eligible to contest for elections bargains with a curiously savvier Rahul Gandhi, who must figure out how to keep the Patels by his side, without losing the Dalits and the OBCs who all want the same thing reservations the challenge before the voter is to look beyond the incessant noise that passes for electioneering in our times, and decide who suits us best. And this must be an assessment, based on their track record, not the daily charges that are being traded. Be it in Himachal, in Gujarat, or here at home, in Karnataka, where right now, George or no George, Siddaramaiah has plenty to smile about.
