Suspected workers of the Janata Dal (Secular) party attacked the residence of BJ Puttaswamy, the political secretary to chief minister BS Yeddyurappa, shortly after he was involved in a verbal duel with JDS leader HD Kumaraswamy in a television debate on land scams, late on Tuesday night. The police on Wednesday said they detained 24 persons in connection with the attack.
Puttaswamy, a bete noire of the HD Deve Gowda family since the 1980s, did not suffer any injuries but his car was damaged and the window-panes at his home were shattered after the JDS workers went on a rampage over his charge that members of the Gowda family are among the biggest land grabbers in Karnataka.
Handpicked by Yeddyurappa over a year ago to counter the JDS on the issue of land allotments, Puttaswamy has been deployed by the chief minister over the past few weeks to dig up dirt against the Gowda family and their land deals ? as a counter to JDS charges of Yeddyurappa using his office to release government land for his family.
Puttaswamy was on air on Tuesday, accusing the Gowda family of grabbing 83 acres of land in their home district of Hassan and granting sites for family members in Mysore in the 1980s. He also accused Kumaraswamy of owning 43 acres of land ?mysteriously gifted by an aunt ? outside Bangalore.
Kumaraswamy retorted to the allegations and demanded that these charges be proved with documentary evidence as had been done by the JD(S) in the case of Yeddyurappa. He called the chief minister?s political secretary a ?pauper? who had been resurrected by the BJP.
The attack on the 72-year-old Puttaswamy who belongs to the same Vokkaliga caste as the Gowda family has been condemned by the chief minister?s camp. ?Deve Gowda only wants to see his own family in power, no one else. Everyone is corrupt and only his family is clean according to him,? said Puttaswamy, who as a member of the state legislative council in 1988 had questioned alleged allotment of 49 housing sites to Gowda?s family. Gowda was then the PWD minister in the Ramakrishna Hegde government.
Gowda?s son Kumaraswamy has appealed to JDS workers for peace in the face of allegations against his family. ?We can fight our own battles,? he said in an appeal to JDS workers.