Yeddyurappa lashes out at Gadkari

Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership for the "ill-treatment" meted out to him, former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on Friday charged party President Nitin Gadkari with failing to keep his promises.

Yeddyurappa also charged Gadkari with having failed to fathom the political situation in Karnataka and understand the 'machinations' of opposition leaders.

"I want to remind your goodself that though you made several promises, none were either implemented or abided by you and your party. I think you failed to keep up your promises and my suspicion is that a couple of leaders conspired and prevailed upon you and the party not to implement promises made to me," he said in a strongly worded three-page letter.

He was apparently referring to promises made to him by Gadkari when he stepped down as Chief Minister in July 2011 that he would be reinstated after courts cleared him from cases he faced and also to appoint him as state unit president.

Charging Gadkari with having failed to fathom the political situation in Karnataka, he said, "Opposition leaders were of the strong belief that removing me from chief minister's post would automatically end BJP's run in the state. But the party leaders at Delhi failed to understand this.

"To make somebody chief minister, you removed me from the post. To make somebody chief minister and implement the conspiracies hatched by some vested elements in the party, I was repeatedly pilloried", he said.

Recounting the circumstances which forced him to quit BJP, Yeddyurappa said he felt that party leaders had failed to acknowledge his 40 years of hard work and tribulations in building the party, which had no base of its own in Karnataka unlike states such as Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

He said he was unable to digest the fact that leaders with whom he was associated and who worked with him had started criticising him and suspecting his efforts in building the party from scratch.