Bangalore: The Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition Government has survived to observe the completion of six months in office on Thursday.

It assumed office on February 3 amidst turmoil within the Janata Dal (S). Since then, the party supremo H.D. Deve Gowda has come to guide the party and he has been the mainstay of the coalition.

The Government has proved the sceptics and the critics wrong about its longevity. Doomsday forebodings had been heard when the maverick BJP MLC G. Janardhan Reddy levelled his allegation of bribe-taking against Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy and his Cabinet colleagues C. Chennigappa (Forests) and M.P. Prakash (Home and Law).

Second-line Congress leaders have targeted the Chief Minister and his family with the allegation of acquisition of a large property in the Whitefield industrial area here and linked its purchase to the bribe taken from Bellary mining lobby.

They have made common cause with Mr. Janardhan Reddy.

The Government had cleverly placed on the defensive the frontline Congress leaders who had raised the bribery charge in the legislature, by ordering a judicial probe which would also go into the decisions taken by the S.M. Krishna and Dharam Singh governments.

Congress circles admit that a tactical blunder had been committed by their leaders by allowing the former Minister D.K. Shivakumar to level the latest allegation on Tuesday.

Mr. Shivakumar himself is under attack for illegal quarrying in Kanakapura taluk and the earlier one of land-grabbing levelled against him by Mr. Deve Gowda.

One of the major setbacks for the State Government in recent days has been that it was forced to stop the judicial inquiry it had ordered into the irregularities in the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor(BMIC) project.

That followed a petition from the builders of the project in the Supreme Court and the undertaking given by the Government to the court that the B.C. Patel commission of inquiry would not take off.

It is noted that it is only the Janata Dal (S) component of the Government which is at the receiving end of allegations. Though escaping charges, the BJP group has shown itself to be a divided house.

The latest difference to arise in the party is stated to be the resistance of some of the party Ministers to face a review of their functioning.

The party has fixed August 5 and 6 for the review and three of the Central leaders will undertake it.

It has been the argument of some within the party that most of them (barring one or two former Congress or Janata Dal leaders) have been in office for six months or less and it is too short a period to assess them.

The Janata Dal (S) is also expected to undertake an evaluation of the functioning of its team of Ministers.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail