A court in Karnataka’s Gokak has issued summons to Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa in a case of alleged violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) during campaigning in November 2019 ahead of a bypoll, reports said on July 25.
Yediyurappa had sought votes from a community during an election campaign of Ramesh Jarkiholi on November 23 last year.
Jarkiholi had contested on a BJP ticket after he and 17 other MLAs from the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) defected, leading to the fall of the previous coalition government. He is now the Water Resources Minister in the year-old state BJP government since early February.
While campaigning for Jarkiholi, Yediyurappa in his speech had said that the votes of the Veerashaiva Lingayat community members will be consolidated and they will not disperse here and there, the court noted.
Gokak has a large presence of Veerashaiva-Lingayat community. In the by-polls, crucial to the survival of the BJP government, Ramesh Lakshman Jarkiholi managed to defeat his younger brother Lakhan Jarkiholi of Congress by a margin of more than 29,000 votes.
The Gokak town police station Investigating Officer filed the ‘B’ report in the court, appealing to dismiss the case on the ground that due to the mistake of facts and pressure of work and on the wrong assumption the FIR was lodged as the accused did not violate code of conduct.
However, the court rejected the B report and has summoned Yediyurappa on September 1.
“The court is convinced that there are enough materials in the ‘B’ final report to proceed against the accused and subject the accused to a trial for the offence,” said the judge before issuing the summons.
Gokak is a Legislative Assembly/Vidhan Sabha Constituency in the Belgaum district of north Karnataka. There are a total of 2,40,394 voters in this assembly of which 1,18,974 are males, 1,21,406 are females, and 14 are the third gender.
