By holding out a threat to probe land allotments in Karnataka over the past 10 years, chief minister BS Yeddyurappa has fallen back on a trump card he has pulled out quite often over the past year as his government ran headlong into one allegation of corruption after another.

The latest accusations against Yeddyurappa range from denotifying land in favour of his family to allotting industrial plots in double quick time to a company in which his sons are directors?charges that have prompted the Opposition to demand his resignation on the lines of Ashok Chavan, the former Maharashtra chief minister.

Yeddyurappa has ruled out resignation, saying there was no comparison with the Adarsh Society scam in Mumbai that cost Chavan his post. That?s because denotifying land and allotting housing plots from a discretionary quota, he claimed, were routine practices he simply carried on from previous governments.

Predictably, as he proposed the probe on Monday and promised a long overdue special assembly session to discuss scams threadbare, Yeddyurappa reminded the Opposition that the details of land allotments by previous governments he released to the media were just the ?tip of the iceberg?. ?I have loads of documents to show the magnitude of irregularities that took place during the rule of various governments,? he said on Monday. ?I will disclose those at an appropriate time.?

The past decade, which he wants to be probed, would cover the tenure of three former chief ministers of the state from the main Opposition parties, Congress and Janata Dal (Secular), and coincide with a steep rise in Bangalore real estate prices because of the IT boom.

But in the two and a half years that Yeddyurappa has been at the helm of the BJP?s first government in the southern state, he has admitted to large-scale illegal mining in the iron-ore rich Bellary district, dropped two ministers accused of irregularities, come under pressure to sack a third for an alleged land acquisition scam, and himself faced accusations of favouring family in land transactions. These, in between two separate rebellions by party legislators, nearly cost him his post.

For much of the past two years, illegal mining and export of ore from Bellary have been at the centrestage of Karnataka politics. The government?s inertia over tackling the menace despite an investigation by the Lokayukta, the state?s anti-corruption agency, was one of the reasons that prompted Lokayukta N Santosh Hegde to resign from the post earlier this year. Hegde withdrew the resignation on a plea from LK Advani.

Last year, former housing minister SN Krishnaiah Setty was asked to resign following allegations that his family bought land at a cheaper rate from farmers in the vicinity of Bangalore?s international airport, before he announced a housing project there and then sold the land to the government at exorbitant rates. In September, the medical education minister resigned on an allegation of irregularities over recruitment of staff to two medical colleges.

Controversy has dogged the land acquisition for the the state?s proposed IT Investment Region that would be spread over 3,200 acres near the airport, with a Lokayukta investigation finding that compensation was paid to fake claimants. IT minister Katta Subramanya Naidu?s son, Jagadish, was allegedly among the fake claimants who received the compensation.

While the chief minister has so far resisted pressure from the Opposition for the ouster of Naidu, seen as one of his close aides, he has now found himself in a similar situation on a new front.

Yeddyurappa has rubbished charges of nepotism in allocating an industrial plot of two acres near Bangalore in 2007, while he was deputy chief minister, to Fluid Power Technology Ltd, a company in which his sons BY Raghavendra and BY Vijayendra are directors.

Raghavendra, he maintained, was also given a housing plot in Bangalore in his capacity as an MP and that he was among other elected representatives across party lines who were given the sites, a practice that has become common over the years. Raghavendra is the Lok Sabha member from Shimoga, the family?s home turf.

As he flashed his trump card again by stacking the statistics concerning the extent of lands denotified and discretionary plots given by the past three chief ministers, Yeddyurappa said he had not become an embarrassment to his party so as to warrant his resignation. However, between an unrelenting Opposition and the fragile camaraderie in his party unit, which the BJP central leadership has in the past been hard-pressed to maintain, the turbulence that has dogged the BJP?s first government in the south will likely endure.