ON APRIL 12, Santosh K. Patil, a civil contractor from Belagavi, was found dead in a hotel room in Udupi. Two weeks before his death, the 37-year-old Patil, who was also a BJP worker, had accused rural development and panchayat raj (RDPR) minister K.S. Eshwarappa of harassing him for a “40 per cent commission” to clear pending bills worth 04 crore for civil work done in Hindalga village in Belagavi. A WhatsApp message from his phone to his friends and a section of the media said he was ending his life, and held Eshwarappa responsible. While corruption charges against politicians and bureaucrats are not new, the death of a party worker has been unsettling for the ruling BJP.
Last November, the Karnataka State Contractors’ Association (KSCA) alleged that its members were forced to pay “40 per cent commission” in government contracts. It expressed disappointment that despite writing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about “rampant corruption”, especially in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and departments like PWD, irrigation, RDPR and health, the PMO remained silent. The association said bills worth Rs22,000 crore were pending before the government for the past 30 months.
KSCA president D. Kempanna threatened massive agitation if the Karnataka government failed to put an end to corruption. “The contractors always take the blame for substandard work. But corruption has been part of every regime and now it stands at 40 per cent. Often we cannot prove corruption charges for want of evidence,” he said.
The BJP government has labelled the contractors as “Congress agents”. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai has promised to constitute a committee headed by a retired High Court judge to “review” government tenders costing Rs50 crore or more to prevent “escalation” and “exaggeration” of project cost. Patil’s suspicious death has given the Congress a chance to corner the BJP at a time when growing communal polarisation in Karnataka is working in favour of the saffron party in an election year. It launched a dharna in front of the Vidhana Soudha, demanding Eshwarappa’s ouster from the cabinet.
Eshwarappa, a prominent Kuruba (OBC) leader with an RSS background, refused to quit initially, saying that Patil had no work order to do civil work. However, he changed his mind quickly and announced his resignation to avert any “embarrassment” to the BJP. A day before the party’s state executive committee meeting in Hosapete (which was attended by the BJP’s national president J.P. Nadda), Eshwarappa returned to Bengaluru from his home town Shivamogga with a sea of followers and handed over his resignation.
The Congress launched district-level agitations demanding Eshwarappa’s arrest, after an FIR was filed based on a complaint by Patil’s family. The FIR named Eshwarappa and his aides, Basavaraj and Ramesh, as accused.
Bommai, who is being blamed for letting communal polarisation intensify in the state, found the “40 per cent commission” charge unpalatable. After all, corruption was a key poll plank for the BJP in the 2018 assembly elections and Modi had fiercely attacked the then chief minister Siddaramaiah in his election rallies, asking people to dismiss the “10 per cent sarkar”. In a twist of fate, the BJP, which replaced B.S. Yediyurappa with Bommai last July promising “clean governance”, finds itself on the wrong foot now.
Even as BJP leaders defend Eshwarappa, saying that the contractors had provided no evidence to prove the bribery charges, the controversy has dented the image of the party and the government. Irked by the Congress’s high decibel campaign, Bommai has challenged Congress leaders to “count the skeletons in their cupboard”.
“Congressmen are taking out a yatra as if they are saints. They are trying to set a narrative, but the people of Karnataka have seen them for many years. We will go to the people and expose the scams of Congress leaders,” said Bommai. According to a BJP insider, the party is compiling documents pertaining to the scams that took place under the Siddaramaiah government from 2013 to 2018.
Former chief minister and Janata Dal (Secular) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy demanded a thorough probe into Patil’s death. “It has raised suspicion as he had accompanied two of his friends to Udupi and chose to stay in a separate room. It is not clear who gave him permission to do the civil work without a work order and a work estimate. Then there are charges of 40 per cent commission, too. All these should be probed,” said Kumaraswamy.
On the front foot: D.K. Shivakumar with his legislators addresses a news conference during a dharna demanding the removal and arrest of Eshwarappa | PTI
The Aam Aadmi Party, meanwhile, blamed both national parties. Prithvi Reddy, the AAP’s Karnataka state convenor, said the Congress and the BJP had lost the moral authority to talk about corruption. “The BJP is sidestepping the issue, hoping that it will end with Eshwarappa’s resignation. But it is not just a matter of corruption in one department, but against the entire BJP government,” he said. “We demand a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the case and also into other corruption charges. Also, we want Eshwarappa to be arrested as he is charged with abetting suicide, which is a non-bailable offence. Patil had been flagging the issue for long, had threatened to commit suicide and had also directly named the minister. Eshwarappa is powerful and can influence the witnesses and the evidence.”
Amid the political storm, Patil’s family has expressed suspicion that his alleged suicide could be murder. “My husband was upset that Eshwarappa was asking for a 40 per cent cut to clear pending bills worth 04 crore. He had met the minister several times in Bengaluru. He even pledged my jewellery for the work. The last time he called, he told me that he was travelling to Udupi with two friends,” said Patil’s wife, Jayashri.
Patil’s younger brother Basanagouda, too, suspects foul play. “My brother had taken two of his friends to Udupi. One of them (also named Santosh) was Eshwarappa’s man. On April 12, we learnt about my brother’s death from television channels. We were also informed by the Udupi police. We saw the body lying on the bed in the hotel room. The police told us that he had consumed poison. The friends who had accompanied him told us that Santosh had asked them to take separate rooms as he was expecting another friend,” said Basanagouda, a police inspector in Bengaluru.
According to Hindalga gram panchayat president Nagesh Manolkar, Patil had taken up 108 projects worth Rs4 crore ahead of the Sri Lakshmi Devi jatre (a local fair), as asked by Eshwarappa. “I was with Patil and a seer when they met Eshwarappa in his Bengaluru office. Patil had raised loans to carry out the work,” said Manolkar. A few days before Patil’s death, the RDPR department ordered a probe into the road work in Hindalga as he had not taken any prior approval for the work.
“The government follows a thorough procedure to award contracts,” said BJP leader N.R. Ramesh, a whistleblower who has exposed several scams. “The work estimate and action plan is prepared, a tender is called, technical and financial bids are opened and then the lowest bidder’s document is put up before the empowered committee for approval. This is followed by an agreement with the contractor and a work order is issued. Any work taken up without a work order is illegal.”
The Congress has announced compensation worth Rs11 lakh to Patil’s family, and the contractors’ association has demanded Rs2 crore as compensation and the settlement of pending bills of Rs4 crore, but not everyone shares similar sentiments. Ravikrishna Reddy, anti-corruption crusader and founder of the Karnataka Rashtra Samiti (KRS), said people should have no sympathy for contractors who took up projects without work orders. “It is not only a criminal offence, but also the main reason for substandard work. Every contractor must display a banner giving out cost of the project, the dates of commencement and completion and work order details,” he said.
While anti-corruption activists warn that work without competitive and transparent bidding will result in nepotism, substandard work and corruption, contractors argue that they are forced to take up projects based on oral instructions from politicians and senior officials. “A majority of works are taken up without a work order, based on assurances by politicians, and later ratified to make the payment. The payment is also delayed for years,” said Kempanna.
A closer look at Bengaluru’s potholed roads and the BBMP budget for roads paints a clear picture of nepotism and corruption. A study by Bengaluru Navanirman Party found that Rs21,000 crore was allotted for roads between 2015 and 2020, and yet city roads remained as pathetic as ever. “Of the 63,629 road projects worth Rs21,000 crore approved by the BBMP, 28,314 projects worth Rs10,018 crore were awarded to a single agency, the Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Limited,” according to the study.
The BBMP follows the “27 per cent commission system”. A corporator takes 3 to 4 per cent on every bill, the assistant engineer charges 5 per cent commission to make an entry in bill register, another 5 per cent for bill registry (BR) approval, the executive engineer charges 4 per cent (for measurement book and to release the cheque), the executive engineer office staff take 0.5 per cent, the chief engineer takes 1 per cent and his office 0.5 per cent, the joint commissioner 1 per cent and the chief accounts office 6 per cent.
Dingaleshwar Swamiji of the Balehosur mutt in Gadag district alleged that the grants given to the religious mutts, too, were not spared as they had to pay “30 per cent commission” on most projects. The Lingayat pontiff said he was once asked to pay a bribe of Rs25 lakh for a grant of Rs75 lakh. “The grant sanctioned by the Kumaraswamy government for the construction of Yatri Nivas has still not been released in full as the Land Army engineer demanded 30 per cent,” said the pontiff. He, however, clarified that his allegations were not related to the grants being disbursed by the endowment department to the mutts.
Some activists blame the defanging of the lokayukta by the Siddaramaiah government for the unabated corruption. The quasi-judicial lokayukta was stripped of its police (investigative) powers and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) was made to take its place. While the ACB raids on officials were talked about a lot, the conviction rate has remained at around 35 per cent. Of the 310 cases registered over the last five years, 223 are awaiting government sanction to initiate criminal prosecution against erring officials. Social activist S.R. Hiremath said if the lokayukta got police powers back and if a man of integrity were to head the organisation, up to 90 per cent convictions were possible.
Kempanna said local contractors were being elbowed out of the bidding process. “The government now entertains only new licensees from states like Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. The package system (bundling of work) keeps smaller local contractors out of the game. The tender conditions are being tweaked to favour some contractors. In fact, Health Minister Dr K. Sudhakar’s family has picked up 60 per cent of the health department building contracts. We will soon release evidence against five or six ministers and around 20 MLAs who are demanding cuts,” he said.
Reacting to the complaint raised by the contractors, activists said the system was run by a syndicate of criminals. “These contractors are stooges who have fallen out of their master’s favour and are looking for a new master,” said Reddy. “They are part of the nexus and have long been indulging in corrupt practices and sharing the loot with politicians and bureaucrats. It is an irony that the ones who flout the rule book are seeking justice now.”