MANGALORE: Swabhimana Vedike chief Urimajalu K Rama Bhat has rejected the BJP’s attempts at conciliation and stood firm on his stand to contest as an independent for the Mangalore Lok Sabha seat.
After talks between Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa and Rama Bhat’s trusted lieutenant Anna Vinayachandra failed, MLA N Yogish Bhat and entrepreneur Nitte Vinaya Hegde tried in vain to convince Bhat.
“They made all sorts of promises and District incharge Minister Krishna Palemar even promised to make corporator Mariamma Thomas the next mayor of Mangalore, but we refused to budge,” Rama Bhat revealed at a press conference at the Patrika Bhavan here on Monday.
Bhat said that any political party which does not think independently is heading for doom. He recalled many incidents to explain how the RSS was arm-twisting the BJP government. According to him, just a couple of weeks before the elections, the names of D V Sadananda Gowda, Pratap Simha Nayak, SR Rangamurthy and even Monnappa Bhandary were making the rounds in the BJP circles for the Mangalore LS seat.
Coastal Development Authority chairman Nagaraj Shetty proposed Nalin Kumar Kateel’s name at a meeting, but it was vetoed by the party cadres. The candidature was endorsed at another meeting held on March 14. “District BJP president Monnappa Bhandary, who was kept in the dark about the candidature of Nalin Kumar Kateel, sulked, but later came around to accepting his candidature,” Bhat said.
He recollected how the ‘Shakthi Kendra’ had attempted to stall Madhav Bhandary’s appointment as chairman of the MUDA. “They forced the Chief Minister to appoint entrepreneur Rajesh Nayak in place of Bhandary and if not for the bureaucracy which put its foot down, Rajesh Nayak would have been the MUDA chairman,” he said, adding that the BJP would soon make MLA Yogish Bhat a scapegoat.