Firoz.T.Totanawala The Bangalore Metro Reporter IN THE NAME OF LORD YEDURAPPA USES PUBLIC MONEY FOR PERSONAL USE

By Firoz.T.Totanawala 

 The Bangalore Metro Reporter 

IN THE NAME OF LORD 

YEDURAPPA USES PUBLIC MONEY FOR PERSONAL USE ADS FROM PUBLIC MONEY TO CHALLENGE HDK ALLEGATIONS 

 Well, the meaning of Democracy is changing day by day. Particularly in Karnataka, where the politics has reached rotten low, any new insult and abuse of Democracy by the bigwigs in power is just expected. 

 So, here is another one from the Yedurappa camp. To ask you a simple question, what would you do when you are in power and have to settle a personal score with someone? Forget about you, in case of Yedurappa, besides using the power to curb, he will even use the taxpayers’ money for his personal matters. 

 Few days back, major newspapers carried front page advertisements of Chief Minister B.S Yeddyurappa’s open letter to former C. M., H. D. Kumaraswamy daring him to swear before Lord Manjunath regarding his charge that Yedurappa had tried for a compromise. Shockingly, the advertisements were issued by the State Information Department which means that the payment was done by the Government from the taxpayers’ money to settle personal score of Yedurappa with Kumaraswamy which indeed is a case of misuse of taxpayer’s money. Yedurappa has no right to issue advertisements funded from the State treasury to in reply to any of his personal allegations. He could have used the media to refute the charges and dare Kumaraswamy to swear before Lord Manjunatha, but, he has no right to spend huge money from public treasury to settle his personal scores. If he was indeed interested, he should have paid from his own pocket. 

 Charges and counter charges between the ruling party and opposition are very natural in a democracy. But, in the case of B.S Yeddyurappa’ Government, the charges by the opposition particularly the JD(S) and especially its boss and former C.M. H.D. Kumaraswamy has never allowed Yedurappa to sleep peacefully particularly for the last one year. Kumaraswamy has been exposing scams after scams against Yedurappa, his kith and kin and Ministers and he had also made the charges with irrefutable documents once. Consequently, the BJP High command at one time had almost decided to send Yedurappa packing, but of course, Yedurappa proved too powerful and continues to be the Chief Minister of Karnataka till today. 

 On the Contrary, this is not the first time Yedurappa tried to manage Kumaraswamy. Earlier when Kumaraswamy was to release scam related documents in New Delhi, Yedurappa had tried to rope in the JD(S) leader M.C Nanaiah to contain Kumaraswamy. But, Nanaiah refused to play the ball and embarrassed Yedurappa then tried in vain to defend his move. Subsequently, it is not surprising that he used his wheeler dealer to bridge fences with Kumaraswamy. 

 While many State BJP leaders were in denial mood about the patch up efforts, Kumaraswamy dropped another bombshell by declaring that he will be exposing more scams of Yedurappa at New Delhi to make it a national issue. Naturally, Yedurappa became restless on this declaration. 

 In reply, instead of denying his patch up efforts, he wrote a letter to Kumaraswamy and published it in all major news papers as advertisements through the Information Department. In this letter cum advertisement, Yedurappa challenged Kumaraswamy to come to Dharmasthala and swear before the Lord Manjunath about the whole incident! He also made some personal allegations against Kumaraswamy, the former PM, H.D. Deve Gowda and his family. 

 Democratically, Yedurappa has every right to deny or rebuke charges made by Kumaraswamy or anybody else against him. But as the Chief Minister, he has no right to use the taxpayer’s money to publish newspaper advertisements to deny or level charges against anyone to defend him personally. There can be no justification to Yedurappa spending public money, on advertising his open letter to Kumaraswamy. In fact, he could have just sent the copies of the letter to the Media and they would have gladly published the full text of the letter with their comments. That would have been easier and cheaper particularly so when the media is following the feud between Yedurappa and Kumaraswamy. But he chose to misuse the tax payer’s money to settle his personal scores. This is highly immoral and illegal too. 

 This only explains the disastrous democratic system that we are following and helplessness of the people for whom Democracy is to function. But, there is no stopping the political bigwigs who are in power and no body to question them against their illegal and insane activities. God save Karnataka.