Bangalore/New Delhi, July 13 (IANS) Mining barons and ministers in Karnataka’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the Reddy brothers, Tuesday said they plan to drag Governor H.R. Bhardwaj to court over his statement that some ministers in the state were indulging in illegal mining and corruption.
The Reddy brothers’ threat of legal action against Bhardwaj came as Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) legislators continued their sit-in in the assembly for the second day running demanding a Central Investigation Bureau (CBI) probe into illegal mining and export of iron ore.
‘If he has said it, we will take legal action,’ Revenue Minister G. Karunakara Reddy, one of the three Reddy brothers, told reporters in Bangalore.
Tourism Minister and the most vocal of the three brothers, G. Janardhana Reddy, said: ‘I have not heard what the governor said. I will get the details first and then react.’
The youngest of the brothers, G. Somashekara Reddy, is an assembly member and president of the Karnataka Milk Federation, an apex body of milk producers’ societies.
Bhardwaj, a former law minister, briefed President Pratibha Patil in New Delhi about the illegal mining issue and the steps he has taken to handle it.
Bhardwaj has formally written to Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa to take action against those indulging in illegal mining and has referred a Congress legislator’s petition seeking disqualification of the Reddy brothers to the Election Commission.
‘I have taken a serious view of the developments,’ Bhardwaj told reporters in New Delhi after meeting Patil.
Without naming the Reddy brothers, he said: ‘The controversy is regarding only four or five ministers over their involvement in illegal mining. Ministers cannot indulge in this kind of corrupt practices. How can they be ministers?’
Bhardwaj said he will meet Home Minister P. Chidambaram Wednesday to brief him about the situation in Karnataka.
BJP central leaders reacted sharply to Bhardwaj’s comments.
Party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad accused Bhardwaj of acting as ‘a Congresss loyalist’ to ‘destabilise’ the BJP government in Karnataka.
The BJP will take the matter to the president and ask her to ‘check’ him, Prasad said.
In Bangalore, JD-S president H.D. Deve Gowda went to the assembly, which he had not entered since 1996 when he was catapulted to the post of prime minister from chief minister, to express support to both his party and the Congress members’ protest.
Congress and JD-S state leaders, Siddaramaiah and H.D. Revanna respectively, spurned Yeddyurappa’s effort to mollify them and asserted they will not leave the house till a CBI probe is ordered.
Yeddyurappa stuck to his stand of not agreeing for a CBI probe and instead offered a enquiry by Karnataka Lok Ayukta (ombudsman) N. Santosh Hegde into the over 30 million tonnes of iron ore has been illegally mined and exported from Karnataka since 2003.
The Congress claims the illegal mining and export scam amounts to Rs. 600 billion and insists that only a CBI probe can unravel the dimension and the people behind it.
For the second day Tuesday, the assembly was adjourned soon after it met with Congress and JD-S members raising slogans ‘We want CBI probe, we want justice’.
They spent the day in the house or in the lobbies having idli or dosa for breakfast, mutton biryani or a vegetable lunch, singing folk songs and dozing off in-between on chairs and sofas.
On Monday night they had blankets, bedspreads, pullovers and mufflers ferried from their residences or legislators home to beat the cold in the air-conditioned wood-panelled assembly hall in the stately Vidhana Soudha (state secretariat) in the heart of Bangalore.
