What is the best way to “kill” a report before it is formally submitted to the government and make sure its findings do not have the desired impact on politicians and bigwigs involved? Leak it!
Political leaders and bureaucrats are equally puzzled over why the Lokayukta’s report made it to the media just a few days before it was to be made public? The buzz in political circles is that the BJP government might have learnt a lesson or two from the “selective leak” of the Liberhan Commission report on the Babri Masjid demolition just before elections to the Gujarat Assembly.
In the case of Karnataka, the government’s intention was to make sure the sanctity of the report was lost so that they had a valid reason to reject it, said sources.
To buttress their argument, sources point out that a fortnight ago, the government had procured a confidential report on the Lokayukta findings in its final report on illegal mining. On realising that even family members of the chief minister were going to be indicted, the BJP began formulating a strategy to counter the explosive impact it would have. The chief minister, meanwhile, made a trip to New Delhi and convinced party bosses that he may escape unscathed. If he was named, an apt replacement would be energy minister Shobha Karandlaje, while he could take over as party president till the controversy blew over.
Soon after the chief minister returned from New Delhi and just before the BJP state executive meeting in Hubli, RSS and BJP functionaries started their strategic meetings on the stance the party should take once the report was out. The choice of Ms Karandlaje as Mr Yeddyurappa’s replacement, however, met with stiff resistance from the party.
Then came Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde’s bombshell on some senior BJP leaders, including Karnataka’s representative in New Delhi Dhananjaya Kumar and higher education minister V.S. Acharya, trying to influence him to spare the chief minister.
Having failed in this attempt, the BJP felt the best way to minimise the impact of the report was to leak it. What was leaked is in the last chapter of the report, the sources said. The chief minister decided to make himself unavailable when the report was leaked and went off to Mauritius. A DIG-level officer was entrusted the job of leaking the report to a national television channel and to other media outfits too, the sources added.