Dinner meet for BJP MLAs over BMIC kicks up row

A dinner meet hosted by Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE) for a section of the BJP MLAs in Karnataka to highlight the benefits of the controversial Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC) has kicked up a fresh row in the ruling coalition.

NICE Managing Director Ashok K Kheny’s dinner meet for BJP MLAs at a five star hotel in Bangalore comes less than a week after the JD (S) reluctantly decided to drop its proposal to bring in a piece of legislation to take over the Rs 23 billion BMIC project in the face of stiff opposition from the BJP leadership.

Clearly embarrassed over the attendance of more than twenty BJP MLAs at the dinner meeting, a few JD (S) leaders have decided to urge the party leadership to take up the issue seriously with its coalition partner during the next Co-ordination Committee meeting of the two parties.

NICE Managing Director is understood to have made a power presentation on the BMIC project to the BJP MLAs and explained to them the importance of the project for the development of State.

Curiously, it is not only the JD (S) MLAs, who have not been able to stomach the attendance of BJP legislators at the dinner meet, a section of the BJP too has taken serious exception to the development.

A few disgruntled BJP legislators, left out in the recent expansion of the coalition Ministry, have decided to lodge a complaint to senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu against Deputy Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa over the development. Questioning the political wisdom of his party colleagues for attending a dinner meet hosted by a private company, which is mired in a controversy, a disgruntled BJP legislator said he would take up the matter with the party’s state unit President D V Sadananda Gowda.

However, it remains to be seen whether the attendance of BJP MLAs at the dinner meet will attract the ire of senior JD (S) leaders like former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, who is strongly opposed to NICE.

But, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, when cornered by the reporters in the Legislative Assembly, refused to react on the issue. “It is an internal matter of the BJP. None of my MLAs attended the dinner meet”, he said.