By IANS,
Bangalore: Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa Wednesday indicated he is dropping the challenge to Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy to repeat on oath at a temple the claim that he (Yeddyutappa) had tried to “buy my silence” over graft charges.
“I will just have a ‘darshan’ of (Hindu deity) Manjunatha Swamy at Dharmasthala on June 27 (the day fixed for the oath taking by the two),” Yeddyurappa said in Kannada at a press conference here.
However, switching over to English, he said: “I will take a final call on June 26 since many religious leaders had advised against it (taking oath at the temple).”
Yeddyurappa had June 18 challenged Kumaraswamy for the oath-taking test at the Dharmasthala temple, a well-known pilgrim centre, about 300 kms from Bangalore. Kumaraswamy had accepted the challenge the same day and June 27 was fixed for the showdown.
Kumaraswamy claimed on June 15 that Yeddyurappa, though an emissary had been trying for over four months “to broker a deal so that I refrain from releasing documents showing the chief minister and his family’s involvement in large scale corruption”.
“Yeddyurappa had offered any amount of money and was ready to do any work I wanted in return for my silence,” the JD-S leader had said.
Even after Yeddyurappa challenged him to repeat the claim after taking an oath at the Dharmasthala temple, Kumaraswamy has been asserting that “I know what I am talking about. I stand by my statements that Yeddyurappa tried to buy my silence.”
Yeddyurappa’s challenge, made Saturday though newspaper advertisements, has drawn widespread criticism and ridicule from a cross-section of people in the state. Several religious leaders have also strongly disapproved of Yeddyurappa’s move to drag in the gods to settle political scores.