Bangalore:
BS Yeddyurappa performed a puja at his new office today in Bangalore -the location and interiors have been carefully chosen using the principles of vaastu or feng shui. So far, the former chief minister had been working out of his home on Race Course Road. His new office is in a building in Malleshwaram that once served as the city's BJP headquarters.
Just a day ago, his offices and homes were raided by the CBI, which is searching for evidence that when he was chief minister, Mr Yeddyurappa gave undue favours to mining companies who thanked him with huge donations to trusts run by his family.
As he seeks better fortune through vaastu-shastra, his party is undoubtedly hoping for better times as well. Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley will meet Mr Yeddyurappa today to quell the dissidence that has become the latter's calling card.
Mr Yeddyurappa denied that his new office will serve as a parallel power centre from where he will continue to challenge the current chief minister, Sadananda Gowda. "I want Sadananda Gowda and other friends to come here too. This office is essentially a 'public meeting centre'."
But Mr Yeddyurappa has warned the BJP several times recently that he is on the verge of quitting the party. He has so many supporters that if he goes through with his threat, the BJP government could fall.
Mr Yeddyurappa was made by the BJP to quit as chief minister last year after he was indicted in a report on illegal mining. He has spent the last year demanding that he be allowed to return to office. As cases of corruption against him have progressed, his insistence has become more public. After the BJP made it clear that he cannot head its only government in the South, Mr Yeddyurappa altered his wish-list slightly to ask that the chief minister be picked from his community, the Lingayatas, a powerful vote-bank. The man Mr Yeddyurappa wants to retire from the chief minister's office is Sadananda Gowda, who he had personally selected as his successor last year.