Avoidable controversy

HUBLI, 28^TH Nov. 2010

Poor Yeddyurappa. He is a victim of his own habits. He is impulsive in his reactions, a habit which he has carried from his days as the state unit and Leader of the BJP opposition in the Karnataka Assembly. He often puts his foot into his mouth.

He has a penchant for giving promise, with no thought whatsoever of redeeming them. He is liberal with both.

These have often dragged him into veritable quagmire of controversies needlessly.

The latest one to surface has been the one in which he has pitted himself with Karnataka Lokayukta, Mr. Justice Santosh Hegde, over the propriety of the state government constituting a judicial commission to go into land denotification issue, when the matter is pending with Lokayukta..

From all points of view, this was an avoidable controversy. Only sometime ago, Mr. Yeddyurappa had brokered peace when Mr. Hegde put in his papers dissatisfied as he was with the manner in which the State Government was hedging the demand for the grant of the suomotto powers of investigation into the cases of corruption. (Under the present rules, the Lokayukta can only act on the basis of the written complaint and in the absence of the same; he can’t proceed in the matter and it for the removal of this impediment, that he has been demanding the grant of suo motto power).

In view of the public outcry over the episode, Mr. Yeddyurappa had to seek the intervention of the BJPs higher-ups including the patriarch Mr. L K Advani in making Mr. Hegde relent. Mr. Hegde was promised that the needful action would be taken to meet his demand. But this has hardly materialized in the days that followed. What has happened is that the government has met the demand halfway only leaving the main question unresolved.

From all points of view, this was an avoidable controversy. It does not stand to reason, why the Karnataka Chief Minister should open another front for fight, when he had won a reprieve by a whisker as it were from the party high command which wanted to give him the marching orders. It has opened the raw wound of uneasy relations between the state government and the Lokayukta, at a time, when the issue had almost gone out of the memory of the people.

One may concede that the decision to go in for judicial commission was the impulsive reaction from Mr. Yeddyurappa, when in the light of the raining of the land denotification scandal involving his own kith and kin, had prompted the high command to think in terms of asking him to quit. But the subsequent events have proved that it is a deliberate action. In an unusual reaction, the state government seeks the status report from the Lokayukta on all the matters entrusted to it for enquiry, while the state government is known to be sitting over the reports already sent by Lokayukta, thus coming in the way of the enquiry reaching the logical end. Not only those, the BJP legislators are let lose on the Lokayukta, with one of them demanding the apology from the Lokayukta to the Chief Minister and threaten to organize a demonstration in front of the office of the Lokayukta. The action smacks of attitude of the political vengeance, which is uncalled for since, the Lokayukta is not a political office, Mr. Santosh Hegde is not a person, who has any political ambition to be fulfilled.

It is not clear what Mr. Yeddyurappa wants to achieve by this kind of action? One plausible explanation could be that he would like to complicate the matter by having parallel enquiry by two separate agencies, and create a legal conundrum to delay the process of enquiry one way or other.

Mr. Yeddyurappa in his wisdom genuinely believed that the judicial enquiry would serve the ends more than the one conducted by the Lokayukta, nothing prevented him from having informal consultation to avoid any acrimony or needless controversy.

That Mr. Hegde, the Lokayukta has been hurt very much by diatribe opened by the government is evident from his strong reaction. Mr. Hegde, who is otherwise quite restrained and balanced in his remarks, made an emotional remark that if the government so desired, it could abolish the Lokayukta by repealing the law.

Mr. Yeddyurappa and his cohorts should understand that Lokayukta today enjoys better credibility than the BJP government and this is the one controversy they could have avoided on the eve of electoral challenge ahead in the form of the panchayat elections next month. The inimical attitude towards the Lokayukta inherent in the state government’s action and observations cannot be hidden by any explanation made on behalf of the government. More over there is hardly anything that government gains politically by throwing innuendos against the style of the working of Lokayukta.