While calling for a CBI investigation and demanding Siddaramaiah’s resignation on moral grounds, will the BJP and JD(S) first take the moral high ground by suspending their own senior MLAs, who were MUDA members in 2021 under whose watch this scam occurred?
Rohini Sindhuri, the former Deputy Commissioner of Mysuru District, had penned a letter to the then Commissioner of MUDA, Dr. D.B. Natesh, on June 5, 2021, highlighting the encroachment of government land. Predictably, there was no response or action.
Three days later, on June 8, 2021, she revealed in an interview with SOM that her attempts to revive the encroached lakes were thwarted by local MLAs who advised her to drop the investigation and abandon her lake rejuvenation project.
In a functional democracy, such serious written allegations of land-grabbing made by a DC would prompt the Opposition party to leap into action, embarrass the ruling government and protect public land.
However, the Opposition in our State was conspicuously silent. Why? Because every political party and its senior leaders had dipped their fingers into the honey pot.
Now, the BJP is demanding Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s resignation on moral grounds. But the question is, who was in power when Siddaramaiah’s wife was allotted 14 sites in prestigious layouts under the 50:50 scheme? It was the BJP.
In 2021, when Siddaramaiah’s wife was allotted these sites, the Chairman of MUDA was H.V. Rajeev of the BJP (now in Congress). The decision-making members included BJP’s S.A. Ramdas, L. Nagendra and B. Harshavardhan. And now the BJP is protesting a scam that happened under their own watch? What a farce!
Even more astonishing is that Siddaramaiah’s son, Dr. Yathindra (then Varuna MLA and now MLC), was a MUDA member when his mother received the land. The then BJP government didn’t see this as a conflict of interest? Oh, the blissful ignorance!
In 2021, when the 50:50 land scam began, MUDA had 26 members, 18 of whom were politicians.
Out of these 18, the BJP and JD(S) had 7 members each and the Congress had 4. Now, the parties who held the collective majority in MUDA during the scam are protesting it? Wah! Bhai Wah!
While calling for a CBI investigation and demanding Siddaramaiah’s resignation on moral grounds, will the BJP and JD(S) first take the moral high ground by suspending their own senior MLAs, who were MUDA members in 2021 when this scam occurred?
Clearly, the BJP and JD(S) protest is all drama, an eye-wash, because if a real CBI investigation happens, senior leaders from all three major parties — BJP, Congress and JD(S) — might just end up sharing a jail cell.
This call for a CBI investigation is not to protect Mysureans or public land. It’s a political charade aimed at troubling Siddaramaiah and destabilising the Congress government.
The tragedy of India is the repeated failure of the Opposition party, both in Parliament and State Assemblies. The best example is what happened before 2014.
The only job of the Opposition party in a democracy is to keep an eye on the ruling party. So what was the BJP doing during the 10 years of Congress corruption? Were they blind and deaf?
Because every major scandal during the Congress rule was exposed by the media or RTI activists and not the then Opposition party, the BJP.
The BJP merely hijacked these issues and rode to power. Be it the Jan Lokpal movement, the 2G scam, the Commonwealth Games scam or the Robert Vadra land scandal — even the National Herald case involving the Gandhis, is being fought by Dr. Subramanian Swamy, not the BJP.
Now that the BJP is in power, how many of the ‘scandals’ they accused Congress of have been investigated? How many Congress leaders have gone to jail? None. For all the noise they made about Vadra, is he in jail? Nope.
Opposition parties in India will kick and scream, organise jathas, sit for dharnas and declare bandhs against the ruling party’s corruption. But when they come to power, they do nothing about it — neither stop it nor investigate it.
In Karnataka, the Congress party raised the 40 percent commission issue before the elections, but now that they are in power, what action have they taken? None!
In August 2022, I wrote an article titled ‘40% Commission, 100% No Prosecution.’ I had concluded by saying: “I say with 100% guarantee that this 40% commission issue will be 1,000% closed after the election, even if the Congress comes to power with a 100% majority.” It has come true.
For now, this protest by BJP and JD(S) reeks of hypocrisy with the same outcome as the 40 percent drama by Congress before the election. At best, the MUDA Chairman could be in trouble and he may keep his mouth shut — for a price, of course — until this issue is forgotten. Then it’s business as usual.
Today, expecting government-appointed Chairmen and Officers to protect our land is like expecting a fox to guard the hen-house. And while we, like dumb cocks and hens, vote for them, they steal our eggs and make a meal of us. Our inaction deserves this treatment.
e-mail: vikram@starofmysore.com
This post was published on July 13, 2024 7:05 pm