– Lakshmana Venkat Kuchi

At the receiving end of the Modi regime in election-bound Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan with central investigating agencies kicking up a storm over alleged scams and corruption, the Congress is paying the BJP in a similar coin in Karnataka.

The Siddaramaiah government has instituted two judicial committees to probe the allegations of 40 per cent commissions in awarding government contracts by the previous government and instances of corrupt practices in Covid management with a directive to come out with their reports within a strict deadline of a few weeks.

The judicial commissions of inquiry could be treated as routine matters, as Congress had made them an election issue and had to institute probes once assuming office, but what is significant is that the BJP has already begun crying foul on the composition of the judicial probe panels.

The significance of the constitution of the judicial commissions is not lost on the BJP, as it launched a frontal attack against the Karnataka government on the probe panel itself casting aspersions on the retired Karnataka High Court judge chosen to probe alleged misappropriation of funds to tackle the pandemic.

No less than a union minister of law and parliamentary affairs, Prahlad Joshi, who belongs to Karnataka, lashed out at the retired High Court judge John Michael D’Cunha who has been named to head the probe into issues relating to Covid management in the state. The probe panel would be also going into the allegations of misappropriation of funds in covid management contained in the report submitted by the house committee report of the Karnataka assembly, which was ignored by the Bommai government.

In a strong reaction casting aspersions on the retired judge, the union minister said that D’Cunha was chosen only because he was anti-BJP. “Who is the person heading the probe? A retired judge who after retirement had only one job which is to blame BJP and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” the minister said and added that the commission was formed only to create a perception.

The other commission of inquiry is headed by retired High Court justice HN Nagamohan Das to investigate the allegations of 40 percent commission that became a huge poll issue that the BJP government could not shake off during the campaign. In fact, these allegations played a major part in damaging the Bommai government which was perceived as very corrupt by the common people in the run-up to the assembly elections.

Now, the BJP knows that any finding of the commissions could be used to further damage the reputation and image of the party for the Lok Sabha general elections, something that the Central government has been doing with its various investigations into the allegations of scams and scandals involving the opposition parties.

It will be for the first time that, if the commissions of inquiries come out with their findings on allegations of corruption and faults in tendering procedures, and if they are adverse to the previous government, for sure they would be part of the ammunition of the Congress and other opposition parties to puncture the BJP’s assertions that its governments were squeaking clean.

The commission’s findings are expected within three months, possibly in time for the assembly elections to five states and most definitely before the time when Lok Sabha elections take place next year. If not elsewhere, the Congress party hopes to make full use of the probe panels’ findings, if they were to be adverse to the BJP, in Karnataka during the Lok Sabha elections.

According to a few recent surveys, the BJP is still expected to do reasonably well, much better than its showing in the assembly elections during the Lok Sabha elections. And this is the reason why the Congress has gone into overdrive with “acquiring” some leaders from JD(S) and even trying for home com