BENGALURU: Rejecting all allegations against him levelled by the Congress based on his alleged entries in a diary from 2009, BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa threatened the party of a defamation suit.
A day after the BJP announced its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, Congress’ Randeep Surjewala at a press conference in New Delhi accused Yeddyurappa of paying Rs 1,800 crore to various leaders of the BJP based on handwritten entries in a diary that the Congress said belonged to the former CM. The 76-year-old BJP leader called the diary and its contents fake.
“Absolute nonsense, disgusting & desperate efforts by @INCIndia to release such fake diary, prove it at the earliest or face defamation case. (SIC)” BS Yeddyurappa said on his twitter handle. He later issued a statement claiming that the diary Congress was referring to had already been found to be forged in an Income Tax department investigation.
Calling the issue a “closed chapter,” Yeddyurappa accused the Congress of planting the story in the media to gain political mileage in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
“I-T department officials have already probed the issue to find that the documents and signatures and handwritten notes are forged ones,” Yeddyurappa added.
The Congress on Friday evening released a set of documents claiming to be photocopies of the diary entries allegedly made by Yeddyurappa.
The notes show entries of money paid and received from various leaders of the party at the state and national level.
Names of those who allegedly received money from Yeddyurappa include Union ministers Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, Murali Manohar Joshi and L K Advani.
The Karnataka BJP’s social media team took to their accounts to accuse the Congress of creating and promoting fake documents.
The unit even put up documents with Yeddyurappa’s signatures, drawing comparisons to those in the alleged diary in an attempt to prove that the signatures were not his.