Yeddyurappa leaves for Mumbai to attend BJP meet

Shedding his defiant posture after persuasion by party leaders, former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa on Friday left Bangalore for Mumbai to attend the concluding session of the Bharatiya Janata Party's National Executive meeting.

"I am leaving for Mumbai to greet Nitin Gadkari on his re-election as the party president for the second successive term," said Yeddyurappa, who had earlier decided to skip the meet as he was apparently upset over being sidelined.

Yeddyurappa was persuaded by his party's top leaders, including Gadkari and Arun Jaitely, to participate in the executive meeting.

The former chief minister continued to attack his successor D V Sadananda Gowda, accusing his government of taking a "biased" approach in filing replies to the Supreme Court appointed Central Empowered Committee on the role of three former chief ministers S M Krishna, N Dharam Singh and H D Kumaraswamy in alleged illegal mining.

Reacting to media reports that the BJP government had not made any conclusive observation on the roles by the two former Congress chief ministers and Janata Dal - Secular leader Kuamraswamy, he said, "If the press reports are to be believed, then it is discriminatory. The chief minister should look into it and ensure that a true picture is sent to the CEC".

Yeddyurappa alleged that when the CEC sought a report on illegal mining concerning his role, the state furnished the report based on the Lokayukta's findings, which had indicted him, leading to his ouster as chief minister in July.

According to reports, the state government in its replies to the CEC recently has said the Lokayukta report on illegal mining has not indicted Krishna. In the case of Dharam Singh, though the report wanted proceedings to recover Rs 23 crore loss allegedly caused by him, during the President's rule, the proceedings were ordered to be dropped.

On Kumaraswamy, the Lokayukta report stated that his actions had not caused any loss to the exchequer.

Social activist T J Abraham has moved the CEC seeking a CBI probe into illegal mining involving the tenure of Krishna, Dharam Singh, who led the Congress-JDS coalition government, and also Kumaraswamy, who was the chief minister during the JDS-BJP coalition regime.