With Yeddyurappa in jail, Advani roadshow to skip Bangalore

IANS

Bangalore, 22 October 2011: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani has dropped plans to address an anti-graft rally in Bangalore Oct 30 even as several state BJP stalwarts find themselves in a legal bind over corruption charges, party sources said.

 

However, he will continue with his Jan Chetna Yatra, a roadshow to mobilize people’s support against corruption, as scheduled in the coastal districts of the state on Oct 31, sources clarified.

 

Advani’s dropping the Bangalore plan has not come as a surprise as the party’s first chief minister in Karnataka, B.S. Yeddyurappa, is in jail here in two corruption cases and Home Minister R. Ashoka is facing a police probe into land grab charges.

 

Besides Yeddyurappa, three other former ministers -- mining baron G. Janardhana Reddy, Katta Subramanaya Naidu and S.N. Krishnaiah Shetty -- are also in jail. Reddy is in Hyderabad’s Chanchalaguda jail for illegal mining in Andhra Pradesh while Naidu and Shetty are in prison in Bangalore for corruption.

 

Industries Minister Murugesh Nirani will know Monday whether he too will face police probe on land grab charges. A court is to give its decision. The BJP veteran’s yatra is scheduled to enter Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district on the west coast Oct 30 from Kasargod in neighbouring Kerala.

 

He was to fly to Bangalore from Dakshina Kannada’s main town Mangalore, about 350 km away, to address a public meeting in the evening.

 

Now he will continue the yatra by addressing meetings in Mangalore and several other places on the west coast Oct 31 and go on to neighbouring Goa the same day, sources said.

 

Advani had often expressed his displeasure over the way his party was running its first government in Karnataka, which it had once hailed as gateway to rule southern India.