BANGALORE: The coalition partners — Janata Dal (Secular) and Bharatiya Janata Party — were making a mockery of democracy and insulting the people of the State by using their coordination committee to resolve the tangle they were in following the bribery charge against Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, B.K. Chandrashekar (Congress) said in the Legislative Council on Thursday. Participating in a discussion on Bharatiya Janata Party MLC Janardhan Reddy's allegation that the Chief Minister had received Rs. 150 crore from the mining lobby, Prof. Chandrashekar said Mr. Kumaraswamy was "100 per cent answerable" to the House. It was unseemly of the member and the Chief Minister to "orchestrate" a question-answer session through the media with "guest appearances" from various Ministers, he said. When a member of the House had made an allegation and "withstood pressure" to stick to his stand, the Chief Minister could have used Section 199 (A) of the Criminal Procedure Code to initiate criminal proceedings against him, particularly since he had dismissed the allegations as false.

This was important since the charges were made against a person holding office, and not just an individual. He was free to file a defamation suit, Prof. Chandrashekar said.

He said the BJP leadership had reduced the coordination committee to a complaints cell. "The coordination committee is not a broad spectrum antibiotic which can be used to cure all ailments," he said. He said it was regrettable that instead of discussing the issue threadbare, the Government was attempting to mitigate the consequences of the corruption charge.

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