Southern States - Karnataka   

Krishna Govt. facing crisis

By A. Jayaram

BANGALORE DEC. 8. The S.M. Krishna Government was in the dumps today as reports of the killing of the abducted former Minister, H. Nagappa, reached here. With the death of the captive reported on the 106th day of the abduction, it appears it is the Government which has become a hostage to the brigand, Veerappan. It had to await the despatch of recorded cassettes by the brigand, who was dictating terms to it and hence it cannot escape the criticism of allowing Mr. Nagappa to die in the wild.

The Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, was in New Delhi after campaigning for the Congress in Gujarat is rushing back here tomarrow. The Home Minister, Mallikarjun Kharge, was dealing with the situation.

It is perhaps the greatest crisis faced by the 38-month-old Krishna Ministry, larger in gravity than the abduction of the Kannada matinee idol, Rajkumar in July-November 2000 and the Cauvery waters crisis.

The Opposition leaders, some of whom have already demanded the resignation of the Chief Minister and that of Mr. Kharge, cannot escape their own role. It was the Opposition leaders, particularly those of the JD (U), to which Mr. Nagappa belonged, who forced on the Government the strategy of securing the release of Mr. Nagappa through negotiations, which perhaps meant payment of a ransom.

Since the Tamil Nadu has denied that its Special Task Force has carried out any operations against Veerappan, the speculation is that the bandit could have killed Nagappa, having grown impatient that the emissaries were not sent to him with the ransom.

Unlike Mr. Rajkumar, who has a large and militant following of fans especially in the old Mysore region, Mr. Nagappa did not have any. But he enjoyed the sympathy and support of the Lingayat caste and its mathadipathis, who had been repeatedly alleging that the Government was not evincing the same interest it had displayed while striving to secure the release of Mr. Rajkumar. This evening, some of the Lingayat legislators and political leaders such as M.P. Prakash and V. Somanna met at the JSS Centre at Jayanagar here to take stock of the situation. Perhaps, the news of Mr. Nagappa's death had not reached them when they broke up. The Lingayats, in general, have their own grievances against the Krishna Government.

The same allegation of the Government being indifferent had been levelled by the Opposition political parties.

The Government must be ruing the day it lowered the vigil against Veerappan and did not work for his elimination once he released Mr. Rajkumar. In 2000, the then DMK Government of Tamil Nadu went along with Karnataka in the decision to send emissaries to Veerappan and, perhaps, also pay him the demanded ransom as alleged by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, and corroborated by the former police chief, C. Dinakar. This time, it found that the AIADMK Government of Tamil Nadu was for intensifying the STF operations against Veerappan.

The Government drew a blank in searching for emissaries, as Tamil Nadu had jailed the Tamil extremists who were apparently on good terms with Veerappan.

In the early days of the abduction since August 25, the Government raised hopes of pursuing the brigand. The then DG- IGP, V.V. Bhaskar, had even led the STF personnel into the forest where Veerappan was believed to be hiding. But the Government yielded to the pressure mounted by the Opposition parties for stopping the STF operations, sending negotiators, and securing the release of Veerappan.

Apparently, the death of the non-controversial and locally popular Mr. Nagappa is a defeat for the pacificists in political parties and outside, who had dictated the strategy adopted by the Government.

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