BJP pushes, Yeddy digs in heels Delhi talks stretch late into the night

New Delhi, July 27: The BJP leadership was trying desperately to persuade Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa to resign after he was indicted in the Lokayukta report on illegal mining but he was resisting strongly in a meeting that dragged on for over three hours till early morning.

At 2.30am, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and M. Venkaiah Naidu were still at party president Nitin Gadkari’s home arguing with Yeddyurappa that his position had become untenable, sources said. The meeting had started at 11pm.

Yeddyurappa, however, dug in his heels, sticking to the line he had taken when he landed here from Bangalore, the sources said.

“Why should I resign? Central party leaders are with me, MLAs are with me. The question of resigning does not arise,” Yeddyurappa shot back, asked if he would quit.

The chief minister said he had come to Delhi to explain the contents of Lokayukta Santosh Hegde’s report to the BJP’s central leaders. The report, submitted today, says Yeddyurappa and his family received Rs 30 crore in kickbacks.

His defiance notwithstanding, BJP leaders hoped the chief minister would ultimately see reason. They hoped he would return to Bangalore tomorrow, hold a cabinet meeting and then resign before the monsoon session of Parliament begins on Monday.

At the meeting, Gadkari pointed out to Yeddyurappa that “political propriety” and not legal considerations had made his continuance untenable after the Lokayukta report, the sources said.

The party president offered him an “honourable exit” by asking him to step down and appoint a person of his choice as replacement, the sources said. The BJP’s central leaders also promised the chief minister his exit would be “stop-gap” and that he alone would lead the party in the next elections.

Yeddyurappa, however, sought to argue that the Lokayukta report lacked concrete evidence to nail him and it would not be proper to step down simply on the question of “political perception”.

The BJP wants to gain the moral high ground to gun for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and home minister P. Chidamabaram in the 2G scam and is therefore desperate to force Yeddyurappa out.

The chief minister was learnt to have argued it was not possible to find a replacement for him. “Yeddyurappa is Yeddyurappa’s replacement,” he said, adding the party would lose the only southern state it rules if it insisted on his resignation.

The chief minister argued that the Lokayukta report talks about donations received by a trust run by his family from a mining company but does not establish any quid pro quo.

He said neither he nor his government took any decisions to favour the company in return for the donations.

“Culpability of the chief minister is established only when there is a quid pro quo,” remarked a close aide of Yeddyurappa, in Delhi for the meeting.