BENGALURU: BJP MP and former health minister Dr K Sudhakar on Friday welcomed the Siddaramaiah cabinet’s decision to set up a committee headed by the chief secretary to study the Justice John Michael D’Cunha inquiry commission interim report on alleged irregularities during the Covid pandemic in the previous BJP government.
“The issue was significant as it involved managing the situation to save the lives of over 6 crore people during the crisis. The Congress government had ordered the probe that I had welcomed it. Now they have got an interim report and tasked officials to analyse it, and I am happy for it.
Those who had doubts over the handling of the situation should realise what sort of determination the then governments led by B S Yediyurappa and Basavaraj Bommai had shown to tackle the situation. Let sensible people in the state know about it,” he told reporters. He said tackling the situation was not the task of an individual, as the entire government machinery was part of the mission.
“The entire BJP government was part of tackling the Covid situation. The then CM Yediyurappa ( who was the head of the task force), myself, then ministers R Ashoka and Dr C N Ashwath Narayan had all worked together. I will await the analysis of the report by the chief secretary-headed committee. We are answerable to people and are not running away,” he said.
He said Law Minister H K Patil was just a spokesperson for the cabinet meeting and he cannot be a judge, giving his assessment that misappropriation of hundreds of crores of rupees happened as mentioned in the report. “I had not gone through the report or heard Patil’s remarks either, and the latter was not part of the investigation commission. He is only a spokesperson for the cabinet; he should do the spokesperson’s job; why should he do the job of a judge?”
He maintained that the inquiry commission was set up to conduct the probe against the BJP government as a whole, and Siddaramaiah had also clarified that the inquiry was not against any individual.
Meanwhile, Union Minister of Steel and Heavy Industries H D Kumaraswamy took a dig at Siddaramaiah for “trying to corner Sudhakar”, and suggested that the cabinet should also discuss the Justice H S Kempanna commission’s report on the denotification (also known as ‘the’ redo’ case) of lands at Arkavathy Layout in Bengaluru.
“Was it (managing Covid situation) just an individual’s task? Thousands of officials, scores of ministers, and the entire government had honestly toiled under pressure to tackle it. While protecting the lives of people, some decisions were taken that were being questioned. Let the truth prevail as the inquiry commission’s interim report has come out and the committee will study it,” he said.