New Delhi: Karnataka Social Welfare minister H Anjaneya, whose wife has been stung in a sting operation by a Kannada news channel has denied that his wife has demanded bribe. Speaking to IBNLive from Bengaluru, Anjaneya said that his wife was an innocent woman and the sting operation was a part of a larger conspiracy to unseat him.
Suvarna News 24/7 aired a sting operation exposing the rampant corruption in the Social Welfare department. In the sting operation, Anjaneya’s wife Vijaya was seen taking Rs 7 lakh bribe from an undercover reporter to grant a food supply tender worth Rs 7 crore to his firm.
After the sting was aired on November 3, a rattled Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in Karnataka summoned Anjaneya seeking explanation.
Giving a clean chit to his wife, Anjaneya said, "it is a conspiracy to unseat me. I am a Dalit. That too from the lowest strata even among the Dalits. Many people don’t want me to do well and stay in power. They have conspired against me to end my political career. Hundreds of people come to my house with invitations and gifts like sweet etc. My wife is an innocent villager. These TV people gave a packet saying that it was a gift. Actually there was no money in it. It had contained some cards. They later claimed that it had contained money. We have been facing this kind of exploitation for centuries."
He rejected the demands for his resignation saying that he has done nothing wrong. "I have not taken any money. I am nowhere in the picture. The TV sting operation claims that my wife took money. I have already explained the sequence of events. She took no money. Based on the sting operation, I have already ordered action against the concerned officer. Let the police investigate and take action. Prima facie it is a conspiracy against me by some powerful people. Because I am close to the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, they want to ‘fix’ him by implicating me in a false case," he said.
He also added that there is corruption in his department. However, he claimed that only some people at the lower level are involved in it but there is no corruption in his office.
A confidante of the Chief Minister has claimed that an embarrassed Siddaramaiah summoned Anjaneya to his office and took him to task. Anjaneya had gone to the Chief Minister’s office with two Dalit MPs - KH Muniyappa and BN Chandrappa - who are from the same caste like him, to offer his explanation.
In Karnataka, Dalits are primarily divided into two larger groups - ‘Right’ and ‘Left’. ‘Right’ are from the upper castes among the Dalits and ‘Left’ are from lower castes. ‘Right’ population is less than 30% of the total Dalit population in Karnataka while more than 70% Dalits are ‘Left’. The ‘Left’ Dalits allege that the powerful ‘Right’ are cornering all the benefits meant for the Dalits and the ‘Left’ get nothing.
Anjaneya is a ‘Left’ Dalit. Most other Dalit leaders in Karnataka politics including top leader M Mallikarjuna Kharge are from the ‘Right’.
The Anjaneya episode may soon snowball into a ‘Right’ versus ‘Left’, upper castes versus Dalits controversy in Karnataka politics.
Anjaneya is from a very poor background and his parents were manual labourers. A protégé of late Chief Minister S Bangarappa, he became Karnataka Youth Congress president in the early 1990s and later got elected to the state Assembly from a reserved seat meant for the Dalits.
In the 2013 Assembly elections, he was elected from Holalkere and became a Cabinet minister for the first time. He is very close to Siddaramaiah and has been very vocal about it. The Chief Minister is now facing a big moral dilemma. Will he sack his trusted man to save the image of the government or will he defend him?
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