Moves are allegedly afoot to hush up the medical college bribery scam that battered the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by delaying a meaningful probe and altering a probe report prepared by two senior party leaders.
National and State leaders are understood to have reached a broad understanding to delay the inquiry into the graft, alleged hawla fund transfer, and the report leak so that it could be pushed to oblivion in due course. Political foot-dragging is being considered as a pragmatic option than opting for an inquiry to overcome the crisis.
Party sources told The Hindu that even disciplinary action was likely to be restricted to nondescript workers manning the party offices, so that leaders would go unscathed.
Meanwhile, as part of the damage control exercise, a senior Sangh Parivar functionary is understood to have made a vain bid to persuade the probe panel members to expunge the strictures made against a State general secretary and make alterations in the report. But the tacit move has further deepened the internal dissensions as one of the commission members outrightly refused to relent.
The national leadership is riled over the scam that has left a scar on the carefully nurtured corruption-free image of the party, but is reported to be at a loss on going on a full-fledged fire-fighting drive.
The alleged bid to influence the commission members to dilute the contents of the report is being construed as a first move to bridle the raging schism, mud-slinging in the party and leaders accused to have a role in the scam.
There are complaints that the rival factions are targeting their foes and striving to implicate even those who are not remotely linked to the issue. It was in this context that State president Kummanam Rajasekharan wrote a letter to the party cadres describing the whole issue as an `individualistic offence’ in which the organisation has no involvement.
But contentious issues such as the leak of a signed copy of the report and hawala money transactions continued to remain unaddressed. Leaders were at a loss in offering a convincing reply to the allegations that had stemmed from within the party itself to the cadres, sources said.
The leadership’s helplessness in clearing the air on such issues was feared to tear the captive vote base of the party asunder and also lent a freehand to its critics to take the leadership to task, sources said.