By V.S. Karnic, IANS,
Bangalore : Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa has described 2009 as the year of ‘agni pareeksha’, or trial by fire. But the dissidence that haunted him through the past year is likely to bog him down in the new year too.
The chief minister is relieved that he survived a determined bid by the financially powerful ministers, the Reddy brothers of Bellary, to replace him in October-November.
His New Year promises include not allowing internal differences in the party to affect governance and giving more attention to toning up the administration.
“People should feel the change (in governance) in 2010,” he said Friday, the first day of the New Year.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister hopes party legislators and parliament members will support him in the efforts to improve governance. He has convened a meeting of the legislature party on Jan 4 to seek the backing of legislators to keep his promises.
However, a section of legislators and parliament members do not seem to be in a mood to forgive him, though he has been apologizing “for committing several mistakes to save his chair” since becoming chief minister 19 months ago.
Yeddyurappa will find it particularly difficult to contain the growing anger among large number of party legislators and parliament members over the induction of a ‘tainted’ legislator M.P. Renukacharya into his ministry on Dec 24.
Renukacharya is facing criminal cases of extortion, intimidation and insulting the modesty of a woman, based on a complaint by a nurse, Jayalakshmi, in 2007. She had released photos of Renukacharya hugging and kissing her. They were taken at gun point, she had claimed.
On the day Yeddyurappa was promising better governance in the new year in Bangalore, Anantkumar Hegde, a Lok Sabha member from Uttara Kannada, about 520 km from here, became the latest BJP leader to criticize Renukacharya’s induction into the ministry.
“This shows the moral bankruptcy of the government,” Hegde told reporters.
He repeated his criticism Saturday. “It appears the party is giving more importance to being in power than adhering to its principles and policies,” Hegde told reporters in Karwar, Uttara Kannada’s main town.
All 16 BJP legislators from Bangalore urban and rural districts, including two ministers, had stayed away from Renukacharya’s swearing-in function.
Yeddyurappa also cannot wish away the Reddy brothers issue.
The brothers, Tourism Minister G. Janardhana Reddy and Revenue Minister G. Karunakara Reddy, continue to make news for all the wrong reasons. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is probing charges of illegal mining against the Reddys.
V. Anjaneya, a deputy general manager at the Reddy’s Obulapuram Mining Company, has complained to the state Human Rights panel that his life is under threat from the mining barons as he agreed to cooperate with the CBI to probe the charges against the Reddys.
The human rights panel wants the Yeddyurappa government to hand over the Anjaneya case to the state Crime Investigation Department.
Yeddyurappa has not responded to the panel’s suggestion. His office says it is yet to get an official letter from the panel on the subject.
Tourism Minister Janardhana Reddy has denied Anjaneya’s allegations. The Obulapuram Mining Co. has filed a case of embezzlement against Anjaneya.
The chief minister has a lot of balancing to do, caught between the Human Rights panel and the Reddy brothers on the one hand and pro and anti-Renukacharya legislators on the other.
The state BJP unit is to have a new president later this month as the term of D.V. Sadananda Gowda is expiring. Gowda and Yeddyurappa differed on many issues, particularly over making new entrants to the party ministers in the name of a stable government.
Yeddyurappa would be hoping the new state unit president would deftly handle the growing restlessness among party old-timers over the compromises he has to make to keep himself and the BJP in power in the state.
(V.S. Karnic can be contacted at [email protected])