The Karnataka man of the match for the Congress party, DK Shivakumar held an urgent press conference today and looked agitated while alleging that the CBI was about to raid 11 MLAs of the Congress party including him.
He said, “there is no question of bowing under any pressure. These politically motivated raids and the warrants have come from agencies that come under BJP’s control,” after alleging that BJP was indulging in “vendetta politics” and that it will not stop them from doing the work of the party and abiding by the law of the land.
He reportedly also said that the BJP has also been hounding him and his brother to jump ship and join the BJP and that the central agencies should not bow to political pressure, hinting that the CBI raids that are supposedly going to be conducted against him, his brother and their associates.
Karnataka saw the high octane political drama unfold when after the assembly elections that saw BJP emerge as the single largest party with 104 seats, BS Yeddyurappa, resigned as the Chief Minister after just a few hours. This move came in the light of BJP not being able to get the numbers to prove their majority on the floor of the house.
After the drama that unfolded and Kumaraswamy took oath as the CM, in a grand event that showcased the might of the united opposition, Rahul Gandhi absconded yet again. This time to tend to his mother, Sonia Gandhi who went abroad for her “routine checkup”.
In lieu of the prince missing, Karnataka has been left Cabinet less since the oath-taking ceremony. While Kumaraswamy has displayed his subservience to Congress and Rahul Gandhi, fact remains that Karnataka is now being ruled by a weak Chief Minister who has no cabinet and prefers to meet radical Islamist outfits like PFI and SDPI in his free time.
Whether DK Shivakumar has any inside information on whether the CBI is planning to raid MLAs cannot be confirmed other than the fact that he says he does. His premises were also raided in the past when a huge cache of cash was recovered from the premises.
In the backdrop of the cabinet-less Karnataka, if one views DK Shivakumar’s statements today, one wonders if Shivakumar is actually attempting to buy time in order to divert attention from the fact that Karnataka is at the moment running on autopilot mode or that Rahul Gandhi is out of the country when he should be deciding on Karnataka’s governance issues, since the Chief Minister of Karnataka repeatedly says that he can’t do anything without Rahul’s permission or is possible that Shivakumar is simply preempting the defections that could happen from Congress or JD(S) considering their alliance was travelling through rocky roads even before Kumaraswamy was sworn in as CM.
