There was high drama at Wonderla Resort where two persons were caught red-handed while attempting to bribe Congress MLAs from Odisha staying in the resort and threatened them when they refused the offer on Sunday.
There were a total of four persons, and while two fled the others were handed over to the Bidadi Police. An FIR was yet to be registered at the time of going to the press on Sunday night.
Accusing the BJP of attempting to poach the Congress legislators from Odhisa as part of the saffron party’s ‘Operation Lotus’, Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar on Sunday said that ₹5 crore had been offered to each of the legislators.
Ahead of the voting in Odisha Assembly for four seats to Rajya Sabha on Monday, March 16, in which no party has the required number to win the fourth seat, the Congress had moved eight legislators to a resort in Bidadi on the city’s outskirts. The legislators have been in the resort since Thursday, and Mr. Shivakumar had also met them.
Mr. Shivakumar, who in the past has had experience of handling Congress legislators from Maharashtra and Gujarat on separate occasions, is learnt to have been entrusted with the logistics involved for Odisha legislators.
Police complaint
Ashok Kumar Das, Deputy Leader of the Congress Legislature Party in Odisha, filed a complaint with the police.
“On March 15, four persons met a few of our MLAs and allegedly attempted to bribe them with crores of rupees each to cross-vote in favour of a candidate. When our MLAs rejected their offer, the individuals allegedly threatened to kill us if we returned to Odisha. They also used abusive and filthy language against us,” the complaint alleged.
Alert Congress workers managed to nab two of them — identified as Birendra Prasad and Byatarayanapura Suresh — and handed them over to the police, even as the other two managed to flee.
The complaint names four persons — Byatarayanapura Suresh, a local BJP leader from Chickballapur, who booked rooms in the same resort and three others from Odisha — Birendra Prasad, Ajith Kumar Sahu, and Simachal Mohakud.
Blank cheques recovered
Mr. Shivakumar alleged that the accused had brought two blank cheques, which had been recovered and handed over to the police.
He alleged that the cheques were from the BJP. “Four persons booked rooms in the same hotel where the Congress legislators were staying. The rooms were booked with the assistance of one Byatarayanapura Suresh. They entered the premises and met one of the legislators and offered ₹5 crore to each vote,” Mr. Shivakumar told presspersons here. “The persons who were caught have accepted that they had come for the same purpose (offering money to legislators),” he claimed.
Following this, both Mr. Shivakumar and the eight Congress MLAs met All India Congress Committee president Mallikarjun Kharge at his residence in Bengaluru. The MLAs have now been moved to another hotel, from where they are expected to leave for Odisha on Monday morning.
Published – March 15, 2026 07:16 pm IST
