Lowest level of politics: Yeddyurappa hits out at Congress over allegations of bribery

Yeddyurappa, who has been accused by the Congress of being involved in funneling Rs 1,800 crore to the ruling outfit's central committee, tweeted, "Fake diary v/s one more edited fake diary, Fake diary says 1000 cr for Sri Gadkari’s son’s wedding & further edited diary says 10 Cr! Looks like someone was in a great hurry before getting it all printed, lowest level politics recorded yesterday. "

The Congress made the allegations on the basis of a report published by The Caravan magazine which claimed to have a diary with notes of Yeddyurappa having paid over Rs 1,800 crore to top BJP leaders that include names like Arun Jaitley and Nitin Gadkari. 

The Karnataka unit of the BJP called the diary as 'fake'.

What did the magazine report say?

As per The Caravan magazine report titled 'The Yeddy Dairies', "Documents accessed by The Caravan reveal that the income-tax department is in possession of copies of diary entries in the handwriting of the prominent BJP leader and the former chief minister of Karnataka, BS Yeddyurappa, that note payoffs amounting to over Rs 1,800 crore to the BJP’s national leaders, its central committee, and judges and advocates. Yeddyurappa recorded these alleged payouts in a Karnataka state assembly legislator’s 2009 diary, in Kannada, in his own hand. Copies of these entries have been with the income-tax department since 2017."

"The copies of the diary pages note that Yeddyurappa paid the BJP Central Committee Rs 1,000 crore; that he paid the finance minister Arun Jaitley and the transport minister Nitin Gadkari Rs 150 crore each; that he gave the home minister Rajnath Singh Rs 100 crore; and that he paid the BJP stalwart LK Advani and the senior party leader Murli Manohar Joshi Rs 50 crore each. Besides this, the entry notes, Yeddyurappa paid Rs 10 crore for “Gadkari’s son’s marriage," it said.