Chastened Yeddyurappa vows to keep a distance from kin

BANGALORE - Battling charges of nepotism, Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa Thursday vowed to keep a distance from his kin and “selfish people”.

“I had not realised that I had been surrounded by selfish people. From now onwards I will keep a distance from my relatives and self-servers,” he said addressing a private function at Hulimavu in south Bangalore.

His office said Yeddyurappa has already asked his son B.Y. Vijeyendra, daughter Umadevi and her husband Sohan Kumar to move out of his official residence.

Yeddyurappa’s second son B.Y. Raghavendra, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Lok Sabha member from Shimoga, does not stay with him.

Yeddyurappa is accused of favouring his sons, daughter and son-in-law with prime land and freeing from government control lands to benefit people investing in his sons’ business ventures.

When pressure mounted on him to quit, the chief minister made his sons and daughter to surrender the land allotted to them.

Yeddyurappa’s move of telling his children to stay separately and announcing in public that he will keep a distance from them comes in the wake of the BJP leadership allowing him to continue in office in spite of serious allegations of impropriety against him.

After a week of discussions among BJP national leaders and twice with Yeddyurappa, BJP president Nitin Gadkari issued a statement in New Delhi Wednesday that the chief minister will remain in office.

Though Yeddyurappa maintains the leadership has not imposed any condition, his announcement Thursday on maintaining a distance from his relatives shows that he has been advised by the party to do so.

He is also said to have directed officials not to entertain any requests from his kin without bringing these to his notice.

There have been allegations that his kin had been interfering frequently in the day-to-day administrative matters.