Bangalore:
Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa is in Delhi tonight to defend the allegations of corruption against him to his party's senior-most leaders. In what's being described by his critics as a desperate attempt to save his job, BS Yeddyurappa has said his family will surrender the land that it got at throwaway prices, thanks to his intervention.
His critics are not impressed with the gesture. "If a man is caught by the police stealing goods, and he says that I have returned the goods, so please forgive me, is this acceptable by the law of the land?" asks HD Kumaraswamy, the leader of the JD(S).
Yeddyurappa's family members - his two sons, his daughter and his sister - have over the past few years been given plots of land in and around Bangalore that were acquired by the government for public projects. The Opposition alleges that Yeddyurappa misused his office to ensure that his relatives - and companies that they are linked with - were the beneficiaries of a massive land scam.
Over the last week, the Opposition, led mainly by Kumaraswamy, has produced several documents to show how government land was denotified in a matter of days and made available to Yeddyurappa's family.
Kumaraswamy, who is also a former chief minister, stage-managed a massive revolt within the BJP last month. With several BJP MLAs turning against Yeddyurappa, the Chief Minister was forced to face two votes of confidence in the Assembly.
The allegations against Yeddyurappa drill a huge chink in the BJP's armour as it battles the government at the centre over corruption. The BJP has been using a trilogy of scams to target the union government: the thousands of crores that were misused during the Commonwealth Games, the Adarsh Society scam in Mumbai that saw Ashok Chavan being sacked as Chief Minister, and the 2G scam which led to the resignation of A Raja as Telecom Minister.