A two-year-old video clip returned to political conversions in Karnataka on Friday after Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala cited a media report that alleges state BJP president B.S. Yeddyurappa had made payoffs of Rs 1,800 crore to his party brass and others.
The clip, made public in February 2017, purportedly catches former chief minister Yeddyurappa joking with then Union minister Ananth Kumar, who died last year, about payoffs to the party leadership.
The two, apparently attending a meeting at the state BJP headquarters, seemed unaware that the event was being video-recorded and that a microphone had picked up their private banter. The party believes that an insider had leaked the clip.
A voice resembling Kumar’s sets the conversation off, referring to Yeddyurappa’s recent allegation that then chief minister P.C. Siddaramaiah had paid the Congress Rs 1,000 crore to bag the post. In the background, some or other BJP leader can be heard addressing the meeting.
The conversation, in Kannada, goes like this:
Kumar (to Yeddy): When in power, you too have paid money.
Yeddy: I too have paid. When did I say I haven’t paid? But it wasn’t Rs 1,000 crore. One would then have to reveal how much it was.
(They chuckle)
Kumar: It’s like a confession.
Yeddy: Everyone would have paid. Who would maintain all this in writing?
Kumar (chuckles): No one will believe that Rs 1,000 crore has not been paid (by Siddaramaiah). Everyone will agree it was given.
Yeddy: Let the diary come out. (The reference is to a diary that, according to media reports, the Enforcement Directorate had seized from a Siddaramaiah aide while raiding Congress functionaries over corruption allegations.)
Kumar: They (the Congress) will have to keep answering until (the May 2018 Assembly) elections. Let them.
After the clip was leaked, Yeddyurappa had claimed it was not his voice. The Congress lodged a complaint with the state police’s anti-corruption bureau. A forensic lab confirmed the voices as those of Yeddyurappa and Kumar, but no action followed.
State Congress vice-president K.E. Radhakrishna told this newspaper: “Although I have no evidence to link the tape to what Surjewala released today, I urge the authorities to investigate the whole thing.”
