BENGALURU: Former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa on Friday spiked the Congress’s allegations that he had made payouts to senior BJP leaders in 2009 when he was the chief minister of Karnataka Yeddyurappa said the diary entries the Congress is talking about is fake. The income tax department, meanwhile, has said the diary entries are forged.“I-T officials have already probed the issue and fond that the documents and signatures and handwritten notes are forged,” he said in a press statement.Congress leaders earlier launched a scathing attack on the BJP, citing media reports about entries in a 2009 diary purportedly made by Yeddyurappa and in the custody of the Income Tax department.The handwritten note in Kannada said Yedyurappa had paid crores of rupees to BJP leaders as well as some unnamed judges and advocates.The media report was expected to create a splash amid the fervor building up for the Lok Sabha elections, putting the BJP on the back foot. But the leaders from the saffron party put up a strong defence.BJP leader and Yeddyurappa’s aide Shobha Karandlaje retorted: “This is nothing but a poll-related conspiracy hatched by a nervous Congress.”Denying the existence of the diary recording the payouts, Shobha said: “It is a fake diary. It is the creation of the Congress which is losing ground across the country. The Congress is making baseless allegations as they cannot counter PM Narendra Modi’s achievements. We will not be disturbed by such allegations, we will continue to focus on fighting elections.”BJP Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar said: ” This is nothing, but a failed Cambridge Analytica taught pattern that the Congress tries to repeat like a good student when things start looking bleak for Rahul Gandhi and tough questions are being asked to save him from the embarrassment of failing again and being exposed.”The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Friday clarified that the alleged diary entries found in loose sheets prima-facie appear to be of a doubtful nature.In a statement, the CBDT said that irrigation mintier D K Shivakumar gave some loose sheets to the income tax officials, who were carrying out a search at his residence in August 2017, saying that they were the entries made in Yeddyurappa’s personal diary. The minister claimed that the entries were in Yeddyurappa’s handwriting.According to CBDT, Shivakumar claimed that being a politician, he procured information about other parties, leaders and members. The minister declined to divulge the source of information, citing that the loose sheets contained political information. He also claimed that he gets such information from the public.As they were photocopies, the loose papers were sent to Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Hyderabad, for verification. The laboratory, in turn, sought the originals which could not be provided by DKS.Prior to this, Yeddyurappa had clarified with CBDT that the entries were not in his handwriting, said the statement.“It is clear that for a forensic analysis of the disputed writings to establish its evidentiary value, originals of the same are required,” it said.The income-tax department made all entries to procure the originals of the disputed writings but the same, if at all they existed, were not available, the release said.

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