BJP President Amit Shah was on a 3-day visit to Karnataka.
Pulled up by BJP president Amit Shah for not trying to corner the Siddaramaiah government on corruption charges against its ministers, the Karnataka BJP has announced a week-long campaign to target the Congress government starting with the state's Energy Minister DK Shivakumar raided by tax officials earlier this month.
Leading the week-long campaign against Congress, however, would be BS Yeddyurappa, the BJP's presumptive chief minister for Karnataka that goes to elections next year.
An influential Lingayat leader, Mr Yeddyurappa, 74, had led the BJP to its maiden victory in the southern state in 2008. But he had to quit in 2011 after being in a host of corruption cases and floated his own party. He returned to the BJP ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Mr Yeddyurappa has been cleared of the charges in a few cases but was perceived to have been hesitant to attack the Siddaramaiah government on corruption. BJP president Amit Shah, who was on a three-day visit, however, did not leave him with much of an option when he called the Congress government in the state "the most corrupt" that he had ever seen.
At meetings with state leaders, Mr Shah is also learnt to have pulled up state leaders for letting the state government get away easily when tax officials raided energy minister earlier this month around the same time that DK Shivakumar was hosting Congress lawmakers from Gujarat at a Bengaluru resort.
"The central funding has increased by 1.30 lakh crore. Where has the money gone Siddaramaiah ji? When raids happen, these numbers come out," Mr Shah said on Monday.
Mr Yeddyurappa announced a statewide agitation against the government soon after. In a statement, he said the party's week-long statewide agitation from Wednesday would seek removal of DK Shivakumar.
The Congress was quick to mock the BJP, reminding the opposition party how Yeddyurappa and several ministers had gone to jail on corruption charges during the BJP rule between 2008 and 2013.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the BJP president had "no moral right" to speak about corruption in his government, not when he was sitting next to "corrupt" leaders. "Ours has been a corruption-free and scam-free government in the last four years. None of us had gone to jail as happened in the previous BJP government," he said in a pointed reference to Mr Yeddyurappa track record.