The BJP State leadership’s decision to initiate disciplinary action against two leaders for anti-party activities is reported to be an attempt to pre-empt a national leadership probe into the charges of graft and hawala transactions levelled against a section of leaders of late.
Party sources told The Hindu here that when a two-member committee probed a complaint about the medical college bribery scam, the State leadership had also received another complaint from a prominent leader in the capital about the hawala route allegedly chosen by the leaders involved in the scam for routing the money to Delhi. But the State leadership chose to ignore it, sources said.
The decision to relieve State secretary V.V. Rajesh and Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morch general secretary Praful Krishna of their organisational responsibility for anti-party activities was also being construed as a move to divert the attention from the graft charges related to the medical college issue, fund collection in Kozhikode using fake receipts and those against the allotment of Jan Aushadi stores by the Central government.
Since the national leadership is seriously constrained to go for an official probe into the complaints of graft and hawala transactions by registering a case, it could have settled for an informal inquiry on the basis of the party committee report and also inputs received from various sources that are privy to the developments.
For, registering a case is feared to boomerang on the organisation itself in future, sources said.
Even an informal probe by the national leadership was feared to keep the embers of the controversy stoking and it could have come as a major embarrassment to the State leadership. The real issue of corruption and hawala deals mentioned in the probe report were expected to get muddled in the melee over the disciplinary action and this was expected to prompt the national leadership to close the whole issue by revoking the disciplinary action against the two leaders.
This was also expected to set an escape route for the accused in the medical college scam and prevent others from flagging the allegations about the Jan Aushadi stores, illegal fund collection and such others yet again.
But those at the receiving end were in no mood to relent and were gearing up to make more serious exposures involving senior leaders, sources said.