Is this the way to spy?

Some in the Lingayat-dominated government also suspect Vishukumar is helping Vokkaliga opposition leaders such as H D Revanna.

But his fellow officers are shocked. "Vishu is not that kind of a person. He is serving the government honestly," said a colleague.

Where it began

Last month, opposition leaders demanded a discussion of scams involving ruling party members.

As a counter strategy the ruling party members wanted to unearth irregularities committed by Congress and JD (S) leaders when they were in office.

Yeddyurappa, when he conducted a cabinet meeting at Gulbarga, last month, sent out his officers and secretly discussed the strategy with his ministers.

They handed over the responsibility of collecting details about scams to the information department, and Vishukumar, as director, had to lead the operations.

"The CM asked us to dig out scams from past 20 years and we had little time," said a source.

u00a0"We tried our best, but they were not satisfied."

Yeddyurappa was taken aback when the information officers gave him a bunch of paper clippings, instead of a dossier full of incriminating evidence.

"While we had asked for documents, they just spread out newspaper reports before us. Maybe it was a conspiracy to help the opposition," said a BJP leader.

Coal scam

Yeddyuprappa had little to attack the opposition with during the special session.

He said the an inquiry committee would scrutinise a coal purchase deal from 2002, when S M Krishna was CM.

The government may bring in Madhukar Shetty, an IPS officer with the Lokayukta, as the information commissioner in place of Vishukumar.

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