Bengaluru: With Chief Minister, H.D. Kumaraswamy set to seek a trust vote in the Assembly in all probability on Wednesday, attempts are being reportedly made to dig out the various scams in which some of the rebel Congress and JD(S) MLAs are allegedly involved so that pressure can be exerted on them to fall in line and back the coalition government when the confidence motion is put to vote.
In fact during the hearing on the resignation and disqualification episode in the top court on Friday, the counsel for the CM mentioned during the argument that one of the rebel MLAs was an accused in the IMA scam and four others were involved in various other scams. Ironically, the Congress and JD(S) have been accusing the BJP of using the Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate to threaten many of their MLAs to cross over.
Now, the Kumaraswamy government has reportedly adopted the same strategy to save itself following the resignation of several Congress and JD(S) legislators.
Sources in the government said that Mr Kumaraswamy, soon after posting Hemanth Nimbalkar as ACB chief, called him and city police commissioner, Alok Kumar for a discussion. The CM reportedly asked them to dig out anything which could prove to be embarrassing to the MLAs. These could be related to scams pertaining to the garbage mafia, scams in BBMP, real estate scams, misdeeds in BDA and so on.
Based on these files, the MLAs would be reportedly told that if they failed to support the coalition during the trust vote, they would be 'fixed' and would find it difficult to regain their stature in politics in future.
"Since some of them are close to former CM Siddaramaiah, the latter has to pressurise his associates to vote for the coalition government failing which details of the so-called scams would come out and could even adversely affect Siddaramaiah.
This is a clever strategy adopted by Mr Kumaraswamy to corner the former CM," a JD(S) source said adding such a strategy might help them get the support of five or six MLAs from the city and outside.
