When Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge’s family decided to reject an area of 5 acres of land that was awarded to a trust headed by his son Rahul Kharge, BJP spokesman C.R. Kesavan expressed a disproportionately large amount of skepticism about the move. On Monday, he said this is a dramatic U-turn, which creates serious suspicions and strong doubts. He pointed out that the trust revealing the existence of a government plot yesterday raised questions about whether the Kharge family was motivated by possible legal action.

Kesavan went further and suggested that Kharge’s recent criticism of the BJP might have been a distraction. He said, “The outburst by Kharge two days ago, one wonders if that was done anticipating that the Congress was going to come under attack on the issue of the land allocation.” He also asked the Chief Minister of Karnataka to sack Minister Priyank Kharge, further saying that it would be in the interest of the minister to resign to allow for a fair investigation of the land allocation.

A formal application was made by Rahul Kharge in writing to the Chief Executive Officer of the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) seeking a withdrawal of the allotted land for Siddhartha Vihar Trust. In the letter, he wrote, “We hereby tender our withdrawal from the proposal mentioned above and kindly appeal to the board to drop the CA site for multi-skill development center and research facility.” He said more specifically that this was a voluntary relinquishment in terms of approval of the allotment.

To this, the official BJP Karnataka handle on X (formerly Twitter) tweeted Rahul Kharge’s letter and made allegations of corruption against the Kharge family, saying, ‘After being caught dirty-handed, the Kharge family has been forced to surrender five acres CA site that was grabbed.’ The BJP also labeled Priyank Kharge as the ‘Troll Minister’ and called for his resignation over what they consider a major done turn.

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