Karnataka’s 'porngate' couldn’t have come at a worse time for the BJP, both in the state, where a new chief minister is fighting a shadow war with his former mentor, and at the national level where the BJP is battling to regain lost ground in the critical state of Uttar Pradesh.

The embarrassing spectacle of two ministers — one, ironically, handling women and child welfare — caught watching porn while the Assembly was in session, comes on the back of a series of corruption charges which the party hasn’t been able to live down.

This is politics as farce. Legislators like these put an already embattled political class to shame and beg the question: why do we elect men and women of such questionable character? The two men in question, former cooperation minister Laxman Savadi and former women and child welfare minister C.C. Patil, along with environment minister Krishna Palemar, who allegedly provided the X-rated clipping on the cellphone, may have resigned.

But if the BJP believes the issue ends there, that it can deflect criticism by making the flimsy argument that it moved swiftly to remove the tainted ministers from the state Cabinet, it should really think again.

The central issue remains — a party that preaches probity in public life, and as part of its moralistic holier-than-thou posturing has unleashed its moral police on shutting down Bengaluru’s once-thriving pub culture, expounds on what women should wear, attacked unsuspecting young college girls at a pub in Mangalore, and wrecked numerous stores that stock Valentine Day’s gifts in the IT capital year after year, has lost its moral right to pronounce judgment on others.

Indeed, these men have proved as venal and hypocritical as the rest of the political class that its RSS cohorts consistently trash as tainted and corrupt. Their specious arguments that they were watching the clip as research is simply laughable.

As women’s groups try to point fingers at the saffron camp’s resounding silence, Karnataka’s embattled Speaker, pulled up by the Supreme Court last week for manipulating a controversial confidence vote, and under pressure to quit himself, has instituted a House inquiry committee. Until the committee submits its report, the trio cannot enter the House. But that, unfortunately, is as far as it might go.

Chances are that just like the other BJP luminaries whose names are emblazoned on Karnataka’s wall of shame for crimes against women that have gone unpunished, Savadi, Patil and Palemar will return; their exclusion from the Assembly only temporary, when the punishment for bringing the entire process of governance under a cloud should see them debarred from holding office.

This is surely one BJP coverup that must not be allowed to stand.