On Saturday, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka called for the resignation of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah due to his alleged involvement in a fraud amounting to ₹87 crore within the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation Limited.
State Tribal Welfare Minister B Nagendra has already resigned over this issue.
An application submitted by the lawyer representing ‘accused number 8’ requested that the court instruct the investigating officer to secure and save CCTV recordings from the vicinity of the Higher Education Minister’s office at Vidhana Soudha on May 24, from 10 am to 3 pm, as well as all CCTV footage from the Union Bank of India, MG Road Branch, spanning three months from March 1, 2024, to June 1, 2024. Additionally, it was requested to obtain a cloned image of the mobile phone confiscated from ‘accused No.8’.
The application also sought to preserve WhatsApp communications between “Accused No.8 and a contact named ‘Basavanagowda Daddal’, including a hash value and 65B Certificate, for fairness and justice.
The Karnataka government has set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for the inquiry, while the Union Bank of India has escalated the issue to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Basanagouda Daddal, the Raichur Rural Congress MLA and Chairman of the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation Limited (KMVSTDCL), has been implicated in the matter.
“The BJP argues that the involvement of the Chief Minister, Ministers, and MLAs in the scam makes it impossible for the SIT to conduct an unbiased investigation. We thus demand that Siddaramaiah resigns and hands over the case to the CBI to facilitate cooperation with the inquiry,” stated the party on ‘X’.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has not issued any response to these demands.
Additionally, the BJP has called for MLA Daddal to relinquish his position as chairman of the Valmiki Corporation.
In response, Daddal told the media in Bengaluru that such demands from the opposition were to be expected, maintaining his ignorance of the scam. He noted that no meetings were conducted while the Model Code of Conduct was in effect, indicating that the illicit money transfer occurred during this period.
“This is no minor scam; it involves funds allocated for the welfare of Scheduled Tribes, hinting at a larger network involved,” stated the MLA.