Lokayukta report:leaking from where?

When Rome was burning Nero was fiddling. Can’t help using the cliché because the chief minister was fishing in Mauritius, when floods hitting the state.

Yeddyurappa is holidaying in the island with the family. He landed at Grand Bay, on Wednesday, and we received information from his close quarter that the first thing he did was to dip a net into the sea as the spot is a paradise for deep sea fishing.

This was just a few minutes after revenue minister G Karunakara Reddy took the stalk of flood situation, back home at his Bangalore office, and a few hours before the media started harping on an alleged leak of Lokayukta’s report on illegal mining.

No confirmations on Yeddyurappa getting his prize catch from the deep sea: a Blue Merlin. But the reporters of TV channels were able to dig dirt and the CM was named in the illegal mining even before the report is officially submitted to the government.

Santhosh Hegde was naturally upset as the suspense was taken out of his report with the news channels spelling out the highlights. While he could not deny the fact and figures emanating from the news reports, Lokayukta was on his back foot taking pains to convince the report was not leaked from his office.

The joke is that it was never leaked and it did not call for a great toil for the channels to get the breaking news. The reporters were just repeating, on the live chat, what they had heard from the very Lokayukta. A media savvy Hegde never bothered to bridle his quick temper when talking to scribes, and especially taking swipe at the corrupt politicians usually gives him high. Thus the figure Rs.1823 crore as the scam amount came to fore. There are many reporters, who have heard this figure from him.

If the report was really leaked, we should have seen the copy. Somebody reads to somebody, and somebody verifies with the Lokayukta by reading out what they were read out, and finally he confirms it. But, the reporters deserve a pat on back; their reports did not turn out to be a damp squib and no one including Lokayukta could raise question about the accuracy.

It was really fun to watch him muttering, “I don’t know how it happened. But, I am very upset.”

Then there is a telephone tapping theory. It is easy to blame Yeddyurappa, who might be eavesdropping on every possible agency and person. But, to say the chief minister has engineered the leak to see himself be named in the report is somewhat a crude joke.

Or who knows, if it is a different doosra from the political spin master. Now, the talks are about the ineffectiveness of the report after it is leaked and it is easy for Yeddyurappa to relegate it to the cold storage as he did with the first report on the same issue.

And the likes of B K Hariprasad can blame Hegde playing hand in glove with the BJP, while the likes of Dhanjaya Kumar see an opportunity to reverse it on the Congress. But, all are smiling because the beneficiaries of the confusion are across the party lines.

Only regret is that Hegde, who has an un-blemished image of a crusader against corruption, is ending his tenure with a note not worth remembering. He had deserved a better departure. But, he must blame himself; he should have been a little serious about his position and responsibility.

Can you recall his response to Sushma Swaraj disowning her political children- the Reddys and Sriramulu- citing their alleged involvement in corruption and illegal mining? He had said: “The senior BJP leaders are seeking to disown the Reddy brothers fearing they are named in my report.”

Was the statement amounting to leakage of the report? Then he had denied it and now he is admitting it.

With all service done to the society he could have walked away with a heroic farewell, on 3 Aug, had he followed the lesson learnt from his teachers, as he was saying quite often,: ‘talk less and work more.’