Video of Yeddyurappa diary released, INC demands inquiry by Lokpal

A diary allegedly belonging to B S Yeddyurappa, BJP leader and former K’taka chief minister, was released by the Congress on Monday. The diary contains handwritten details in Kannada, of ₹1,800 Crore given to members of the BJP central committee.

Neatly handwritten, the figures allegedly show dates, amounts and names of the leaders, who were all in the opposition then, to whom ₹1,800 Crore in all were delivered. The diary, dating back to 2012, apparently contains names of Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari among others.

Congress had earlier released photo copies of the diary in March. Releasing the video of the diary at a press briefing, former union minister and senior lawyer Kapil Sibal asserted that now that the Modi Government has appointed the first Lokpal barely weeks before the election, this diary should be the first investigation taken up by the Lokpal into corruption charges against the Prime Minister and other union ministers.

INC leader and former union minister Kapil Sibal while briefing the media said:

• This is a cognizable offence and all top BJP leaders are involved in this matter. This is an original diary. If Mr. Modi believes that Mr. Yeddyurappa is lying, then they should file an FIR against him
• Mr. @BSYBJP's diary shows that approximately ₹1800Cr was given to BJP's Central Committee, whose members are PM Modi, FM Jaitley, Mr. Gadkari
• When ministers were asked about this diary, they refused to reply. We demanded investigation on this matter through Lokpal.

Sibal said that the Congress would like the Prime Minister to respond first. “If he claims that this diary is fake, then we demand that Mr Yeddyurappa be arrested and grilled on why he had fabricated the diary and the entries in it,” he said, adding that it should not be difficult to forensically match the handwriting.

Had the diary been recovered from a Congress leader, Mr Sibal said, the sequence of events would have been predictable. The Income Tax Department would have conducted raids, arrested some of the people named in the diart, the ED would have filed a case and the TV channels would have gone to town. “ And Prime Minister Modi would go on air and declare how corrupt the Congress party is”, he added sarcastically.

But since this diary contains names of BJP leaders, Mr Sibal suggested, none of this was likely.

Let there be an inquiry into whose money it was, from where the amount was received, how it was transported, who received the amounts and how did they spend it, he suggested.

The Congress leader pointed out the irony that the amounts were being delivered to the BJP central committee members at a time when Narendra Modi, the then Gujarat CM, and the BJP were orchestrating the anti-corruption movement against UPA 2 and preparing for the general election in 2014.