Are the BellaryReddys, who worked hard to install the first BJP government in the South, now drifting towards the Congress?
After all the slugging out in the media in the last fortnight there is a ceasefire in the Karnataka BJP and also inside the B S Yeddyurappa government. With some difficulty layers of dust have been pulled over the embers of dissidence. But everybody agrees that the Reddy brothers, who majorly financed the saffron party to power for the first time in the South, can blow off the dust when it suits them.
The Reddys -- Janardhan, Karunakar and Somashekar -- have always played a dangerous game. Remember, they took on H D Kumaraswamy with the Rs. 150-crore bribe allegation when he was CM and have had a dalliance with Andhra CM Y S Rajashekara Reddy even while expressing devotion to BJP leader Sushma Swaraj. But now, the paradoxical question is why are they destabilising the government they worked so hard to install?
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One hears in BJP circles that they nurse a grouse that Yeddyurappa neither consults them while taking major decisions nor has he offered them big ministries as a reward for their investment. Besides, they are apparently upset that the CM has tried to undercut them in their own fiefdom -- Bellary, during the recent LS polls. A candidate sponsored by the Reddy brothers, J Shantha, could scrape through with only a thin margin of a couple of thousands.
All this may be true, but from what I gather, the chief reason for the Reddys to stoke dissidence in the Karnataka BJP is to protect their own business interests.
A well-placed source said: "With the Congress-led UPA returning to power at the Centre the Reddys feel somewhat sandwiched between the BJP and the Congress. Their mining business has come under the microscope and pressure certainly is mounting by the day. One of the ways to save themselves is to drift towards the Congress and they may actually be doing that."
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The Reddys have been facing a serious charge of tampering with the border markings between Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and also encroaching reserve forest land for their mining enterprise. Reddys, interestingly, hold their mining leases across the border in AP while they do their politics in Karnataka. There is a Karnataka Lokayukta report on the tampering of the boundary line and the issue has been raised in the Assemblies of both Andhra and Karnataka.
If this were not sufficient pressure, in April, the union ministry of environment andforests ordered suspension of two mining licenses of the Reddys pending a survey of the border area. Interestingly, as early as February 2009, the Yeddyurappa government had itself written to theunion government offering "full co-operation" to the survey of the "disputed boundary line" by the director general, Survey of India. About a week ago,environment minister Jairam Ramesh again ordered an enquiry by the director-general of forests into alleged violations of the Forest Conservation Act by mining companies in Bellary.
As if to complement this mounting pressure, the whisper doing the rounds in the top echelons of the state government is that the Congress may be "using the services" of Andhra CM, Y S Rajashekar Reddy to create dissidence in the state BJP through the Reddys. YSR Reddy's son and newly-elected MP, Jaganmohan Reddy, has business ties with the Bellary Reddys and is rumoured to have a huge stake in the Brahmani Steel Plant set up by them in Kadapa, the home district of the Andhra CM. "We have reason to believe that in denying Kumaraswamy a Union cabinet berth the Congress was keeping their Reddy option open. The Reddys are arch rivals of the Gowdas and the Congress can cultivate only one of the two at a time. The Congress also realises that it is only the Reddys who have the daring and the resources to inflict damage on the BJP government," said a top source.
Getting the Reddys to crossover to the Congress is also about cutting off an important source of funds for the state BJP.
Among the theories doing the rounds, what is said to be a more likely Reddy gameplan is that they will wait until their strength of loyal legislators shores up to about 30 or alternatively wait until they can bring down the BJP strength anywhere below 85 and then strike by getting the MLAs to resign. In a house of 224 MLAs, this move will not only render the BJP government into a minority, but would also make it difficult for them to think of a possible tie up with the JD(S). Currently the BJP has 115 members in the Assembly, while the JD(S) has 26, the Congress 77 and there are six independents.
There is sure to be an upset in these calculations if Yeddyurappa manages to outmanoeuvrethe Reddys.
