Thaindian News

Bangalore, July 24 (IANS) Karnataka’s beleaguered Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa is returning to Bangalore Monday morning after a week-long holiday in Mauritius with his family instead of flying to New Delhi as planned earlier, an official said Sunday.

“Yeddyurappa is flying to Bangalore from Mauritius via Mumbai Monday morning instead of going to New Delhi as planned earlier due to a sudden change in his return schedule,” the official in the chief minister’s office told IANS here.

Declining to divulge the reasons for the change in schedule, the official said the chief minister would address the media Monday evening at the state secretariat.

“The chief minister’s visit to New Delhi to meet the party (Bharatiya Janata Party) leadership will be decided in a day or two. It is too early to say when he would go to Delhi, though not Monday,” the official said but declined to be identified.

The chief minister has also directed his office to schedule the next state cabinet meeting July 28.

The 68-year-old Yeddyurappa, who is facing his worst political crisis in light of the explosive investigation report of the Karnataka Lokayukta (ombudsman) finding an element of criminality on his part in the multi-crore mining scam in the state, is under mounting pressure from within the ruling party and an upbeat opposition to resign on moral grounds.

Even as Yeddyurappa was holidaying in picturesque Mauritius, the dramatic leakage of the ombudsman’s report in a section of the media July 21 and confirmation of his indictment by state Lokayukta Justice N.Santosh Hegde before the report was submitted to the state government has pushed the first BJP government in south India to the brink.

Noting that Hegde should not have spoken on the probe report before it was made public, the chief minister told a television channel from Mauritius that he was also disappointed over the charge that the ombudsman’s phones were tapped by his government.

Though the chief minister has contested the ombudsman’s findings and ruled out resigning on the grounds that “there was not a shred of evidence in the charges against him”, BJP vice president Shanta Kumar said in a statement in Panaji that the Lokayuta’s report was so much damning the party’s leadership should take action against Yeddyurappa.

“I have informed the party high command about the happenings in Karnataka when I was in-charge of the party affairs in the state, but my complaints were not taken seriously (by the leadership),” Shanta Kumar said in the statement.

Lamenting that the BJP was fast becoming “a party of sons, daughters and relatives”, the former union minister said he knew everything what Hegde was saying all along.

“I asked the party high command to relieve me of being in-charge of the party affairs in Karnataka if no action was to be taken against Yeddyurappa,” Shanta Kumar recalled.