Puttur: Foreign Liquor Procured for MLC’s Kin’s Marriage - 2 Officials Suspended
From daijiworld’s special correspondent (MM/MB)
Puttur, Jun 9: This appears to the a clear case of misuse of the authority. But the question is who misused the authority, whether an elected representative or officers?
For the time being, at least, it is the officials’ turn to face the music.
Shobha Karandlaje MLC
The story is linked to MLC and BJP leader Shobha Karandlaje, hailing from the district, who is also a close associate of deputy chief minster B S Yediyurappa. Her younger sisters’ marriage took place in the Puttur Okkaliga Sabha Bhavan, a month back. Incidentally, Yediyurappa too attended the wedding as part of a hurricane visit.
Unconfirmed reports say that a drinks party was arranged in the night. The officials’ version is that they were asked to procure liquor for the party from anywhere possible. Two excise department officials were reportedly entrusted the responsibility of procuring the stuff from various liquor shops in Puttur as well as Sullia Taluk.
The officers were Yaqub Khan and Krishna Naik. The procurement was not limited to ordinary liquor. Using their clout and keeping the dignity, they collected only foreign liquor. And everything was free of cost. But no one knows if at all anyone from Karandlaje’s side had entrusted the job to them and if so how many bottles in fact were used for the wedding party’s consumption. It is being whispered in party circles that deputy chief minister B S Yadiyurappa and many other MLAs were present at that party.
But the liquor shop owners did not keep quiet by watching this drama. Finally, they complained to MP and state BJP president Sadananda Gowda, who immediately sought government action.
Accordingly the excise commissioner suspended both Yaqub Khan and Krishna Naik. But Shobha Karandlaje has denied there was any dinner organized at all. She said that, immediately after the marriage, all the VIPs and officers left the place. At the same time, the bridegroom’s family-memebrs are strictly vegetarian and staunch followers of Puttaparti’s Satya Sai Baba. Hence, how can anyone think of liquor being served there, she angrily questions.
As this correspondent made enquiries from Karandlaje’s family sources as also BJP’s insiders, now several questions have cropped up which have remained unanswered:
If Shobha Karandlaje in fact is not involved in the whole episode, who was trying to use her name to disparage her?
If there were no secret orders to procure liquor, would the officials have had the guts to misuse the name of an MLC, knowing very well the risk involved?
If the liquor indeed did not reach the wedding venue, where have the bottles vanished?
Is Shobha Karandlaje’s name being unnecessarily, but intentionally, dragged every now and then into controversies of this kind, making use of certain section of the media which is opposed to deputy CM Yediyurappa? Is it just because she is being considered to be close to Yediyurappa?
Shobha Karandlaje with Yediyurappa during the Ullal by-election campaign
Is a defenceless, up-and-coming female politician being used as a soft target to settle scores with another leader – a powerful one at that – by party colleagues?
After the BJP’s debacle in Ullal, where Shobha Karandlaje was put in charge of the campaign by none other than Yediyurappa himself, is it that others in the party are going after her throat?
How come anti-Yediyurappa games are in circulation as the date of handover of CM’s post in the coalition government is closing in with Yediyurappa being tipped to be the next CM?
One cannot help recalling a comment made by union railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav in the Lok Sabha about three years ago. Flaying the virulent attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi by the BJP members who were hell-bent on preventing her from becoming the PM, he had theorized that it was common for male and female politicians to be jealous of a good-looking woman.
By natural corollary, does the theory hold good here too?
Over to political experts.