New Delhi/Bangalore, May 28
The BJP leadership today scrambled to play down Sushma Swaraj’s statement in an interview that not she but Arun Jaitley and Ananth Kumar were responsible for inducting the controversial Reddy brothers into the Karnataka cabinet.

The controversy, coming just before the party’s national executive meeting in Lucknow next week, was frowned upon by the RSS, forcing Gadkari to issue a statement saying that the ‘controversy in the media’ was unnecessary. Both Gadkari and Rajnath Singh asserted that nobody influenced the decision. Singh sought to play the martyr and said if responsibility was to be fixed, it should be fixed on him. Yeddyurappa rushed in to say that inducting the Reddys was his decision.

In Bangalore, the youngest of the three brothers Somsekhara told The Tribune that they were being made the fall guys though they played a crucial role in winning over Independent MLAs, enabling the BJP to come to power for the first time in a southern state.

The Reddy brothers, struggling entrepreneurs till early 2000, call Swaraj ‘mother’ and are known to be close to her. Their foray into iron-ore mining in 2002 overnight turned them into tycoons. The brothers, who now fly in their own helicopters, are accused of large-scale illegal mining in and around Bellary.

The Congress lost no time in declaring, “ While Karnataka burns with corruption, the Neroes of BJP fiddle in Delhi”. Gloating at the ‘civil war’ in the BJP, Congress spokesman Manish Tiwari asserted that the question is not who opposed the Reddys but why were they inducted in the first place.

The controversy has erupted at a time when the BJP is under pressure to decide on its next Prime Ministerial candidate before the next General Election. Swaraj and Jaitley are both contenders.