Bengaluru, Jul 9: As resort politics and private jets grabbed the headlines amid the political crisis in Karnataka, coalition parties and the BJP on Monday traded charges over who “sponsored” the flight of the rebel MLAs to Mumbai on Saturday and the aircraft that brought chief minister HD Kumaraswamy to Bengaluru from Delhi a day later.
After a Saturday evening special flight ferried the rebel Congress and JD(S) MLAs to Mumbai, another flight took minister H Nagesh to join them on Monday morning. The fact that the independent MLA was met at the airport by BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa’s personal assistant NH Santosh provided the ruling coalition with more ammunition to attack the opposition party.
The coalition government accused the BJP of “hypocrisy” for distancing itself from the resignations after a chartered aircraft owned by BJP Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar was used to fly the 10 rebel MLAs to Mumbai.
Deputy chief minister G Parameshwara immediately hit out at Chandrasekhar on social media. “Traces of BJP’s role in destabilising the govt are all over the place. It is disgraceful that the party is attempting to topple a democratically elected govt & grab power through the backdoor, when the state is reeling under one of the worst droughts,” Parameshwara tweeted, tagging a report on Chandrasekhar’s plane being used to ferry the rebels to the financial capital.
Chandrasekhar responded by asking Parameshwara not to blame him or the aircraft, stating that the plane was listed for commercial use and had been used by Congress ministers too.
“Dear @DrParameshwara — this ‘aircraft’ is a commercial charter - tht has been chartered by many ppl incldg ur own ministers in past! So don’t blame me or an ‘aircraft’ or @BJP4India for the problems in yr crooked corrupt opprtunistic ‘alliance’ [sic],” he tweeted.
BJP sympathisers even took the opportunity to charge chief minister HD Kumaraswamy with hiring a chartered plane of a company “allied” to the JSW Group to return to Bengaluru from New Delhi on Sunday night.
Kumaraswamy did use the plane, registered to Monnet, a joint venture company between JSW and AION, to fly from New Delhi to Bengaluru, CMO officials confirmed, but said the CM did not “specifically” seek the use of that aircraft.
“The plane was taken on rent, when the CM was leaving New York. There was no intent to pick a JSW plane,” a CMO spokesperson said. “The CMO used a contractor to hire the chartered plane.”
According to officials, Kumaraswamy was billed Rs 12 lakh for the special plane, which will be personally paid for by the chief minister.
The BJP reportedly has kept on a couple of special flights on standby to take more ruling party MLAs from Bengaluru to Mumbai.
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