Yeddyurappa gets bail, will leave jail soon

Bangalore - 08 Nov 2011: Former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa will walk out of Bangalore's Central Jail this evening, 23 days after he was sent to prison by a Lokayukta court.

The Karnataka High Court granted the BJP strongman bail in a corruption case this morning. He had been given conditional bail in another case last week and his release from prison depended on him getting bail in this case. Mr Yeddyurappa will leave jail in a few hours, once paperwork is completed.

The BJP leader has five land scam cases against him, two of which pertain to the alleged illegal denotification of land. He was arrested on October 15 in these two cases - he is accused of using his term as Chief Minister to help his children and their spouses get prime property at throwaway prices. Mr Yeddyurappa's lawyer said the High Court, while granting the former CM bail, ruled that merely saying that he was influential or that he could tamper with evidence was not ground enough to keep him in jail.

The lawyer said the court had given bail on certain conditions to ensure that tampering with evidence did not happen.

Mr Yeddyurappa's arrest was marked by some action-packed drama on a Saturday which saw him surrender dramatically in court. The action continued over the next few days. Within hours of being lodged in jail, Mr Yeddyurappa complained of chest pains and was in two hospitals over five days, before he opted to go back to his air-conditioned cell at the Central Jail.

Outside, there have been political developments. Mr Yeddyurappa's incarceration for corruption came as a huge embarrassment his party, particularly senior leader LK Advani who was about a week then into his 38-day yatra, lashing out at the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre on corruption. In Nagpur, Mr Advani was seen as distancing himself from the BJP's southern poster boy when he admitted that the BJP could not win the battle of perception without putting its own house in order.

He said, "We never take any party weakness lightly and we proved the same in Karnataka. We had cautioned them in advance but when the Lokayukta report came out, he had to resign immediately. We are fully aware of the fact that no party can effectively win the confidence of the people against the present corruption of the Congress party if its own house is bedevilled with similar weaknesses."

Other BJP leaders quickly followed him up saying that the party had zero-tolerance on anyone mired in corruption charges.

Inside jail too, there has been politics. Several BJP leaders, including KS Eeshwarappa, the state party chief, are believed to have held political meetings with Mr Yeddyurappa in prison, quite against jail rules. Mr Yeddyurappa is said to be extremely upset about Mr Advani's remarks.

Sources say he is also upset that less people, especially BJP ministers, than he expected visited him during his stay in hospital and prison. In the first few days after his arrest, Mr Yeddyurappa had a stream of VIP visitors that included Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda, whom Mr Yeddyurappa has mentored and had handpicked to be his successor when he was forced to step down as the Chief Minister earlier this year.

The state BJP is split wide - there is the faction that supports Mr Yeddyurappa and the other that is completely opposed to him.

Mr Yeddyurappa's release, upset as he is, is expected to wrought some political changes.

The split in the Karnataka BJP came raging to fore when Mr Yeddyurappa was forced to resign as CM in July this year, after a Lokayukta report on illegal mining indicted him severely. His term as the head of the BJP's only southern government was littered with accusations of graft.

source: NDTV.com