Bangalore, March 13: Moneybags and the Rajya Sabha are no strangers but the Vijay Mallya scandal has managed to squeeze out a rare disclosure and a morning-after disclaimer: when the BJP supported him for the upper House, the party apparently did not know there was no money in the bag.

"We didn't know he had this much of debt," BJP veteran and former Karnataka chief minister Jagadish Shettar was quoted as saying in his hometown Hubli yesterday, referring to the industrialist's Rs 9,000-crore default.

In June 2010, it was widely reported that the BJP and the Janata Dal Secular had backed Mallya, who was contesting as an Independent candidate, for a second term in the Rajya Sabha. In the first term, Mallya was supported by the JDS and the Congress, which proves that love and lucre are blind.

Today, Shettar told The Telegraph in reply to a question that he was retracting his earlier statement that the BJP had made a "mistake" by supporting Mallya.

"Initially, I too thought we had voted for him. But I just checked the records and found we didn't support him. The party did not vote for Mallya in 2010. Only in 2002, six of our MLAs voted for Mallya. They were immediately suspended," Shettar said.

However, the BJP leader stood by one part of his statement, saying that "in any case, we didn't know he had such a huge debt on his businesses".

On the morning of June 17, 2010 - the day of the Rajya Sabha election - The Hindu newspaper had reported: "After a formal meeting of the BJP legislature party, it was announced that the surplus votes available with the party would be cast in favour of Mr. Mallya in the larger interest of defeating the Congress."

It is not clear why - other than the default scandal that has made Mallya a liability to his legion of favour-seekers and the BJP's allergy to the "suit-boot" label - the party with its army of fact-checkers waited for six long years to come up with the disclaimer on voting for Mallya.

Now that Mallya's six-year term is coming to an end in June, at what is proving to be an inopportune time for him as well his well-wishers across party lines, political circles here are locked in a guessing game on who will fill the vacancy.

H.D. Deve Gowda, former Prime Minister and leader of the JDS that has a history of sending businessmen to the Rajya Sabha, was silent on his party's would-be nominee while he rose to Mallya's defence yesterday.

Gowda chose last week, while television screens were strafing living rooms with images of Mallya in hot pursuit of pleasure and the social media were bringing the house down with jokes on the "poor" King Fisher, to have tea with N.R. Narayana Murthy, prompting some to read the tea leaves.

Asked, Murthy, the Infosys co-founder, dismissed any possibility of either him or his wife Sudha Murty running for the Rajya Sabha. "That's the biggest joke I've heard," Murthy told The Telegraph and guffawed. "He's our former Prime Minister and older than both of us (Murthy and his wife). So we had a casual chat and a cup of tea."

Of the four seats falling vacant in Karnataka, the ruling Congress would get two, while the BJP and the JDS have sufficient strength to ensure one each.

Political parties in several states field businessmen for the Rajya Sabha. Amar Singh and Anil Ambani had reached the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh on the support of the Samajwadi Party while industrialist K.D. Singh has been elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bengal on the strength of Trinamul votes.

But the Janata Dal Secular and Karnataka stand out on this count. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the telecom entrepreneur, inspired the JDS to mobilise support for him when he contested for the Rajya Sabha.

So did the late M.A.M Ramaswamy of the Chettinad Group, who too reached the Rajya Sabha with JDS support.

Gowda was not always this welcoming towards Rajya Sabha aspirants. When Ramakrishna Hegde, known for his craft as much as his charm, proposed the name of Ram Jethmalani for the Rajya Sabha, Gowda had opposed it. But Jethmalani, who fought a medical college admissions case in which Hegde and his son Bharath Hegde were allegedly involved, made it to the Rajya Sabha.

"We used to say it was Hegde's version of liberalism (importing a non-local candidate)," said Rajan Hunaswadi, former editor of the Kannada daily Samyukta Karnataka.

Mallya, with roots in Karnataka, is not an outsider in that sense. Gowda, who was in Lucknow to attend a wedding, could not be reached for comments. Y.S.V. Datta, the only JDS leader to openly declare he did not vote for Mallya, said: "But there was nothing I could do as the party took a decision to support him."

A Congress leader dabbling in Delhi politics told this newspaper he would not mind pitching for an RS nomination in June. He added in the same breath: "But I hope some billionaire won't emerge from nowhere."

The coincidence of wealthy apolitical players finding a cosy launch-pad in Karnataka has prompted some to wonder whether money in the form of generous donations has been playing a part.

"A rank outsider who happens to be wealthy, with a few thousand crores, getting chosen across party lines does generate these doubts," said Trilochan Sastry, a professor at IIM Bangalore who is associated with the National Election Watch, an independent group working for democratic reforms. But Sastry added that there was no concrete evidence of any payouts.

"The problem with such developments (rich businessmen getting tickets) is that they soon become a trend," said Hunaswadi. They did become one when Mallya became eager to step into Parliament in 2002.

Two years later, an unfortunate event illustrated the risk associated with popular elections and why some prefer the Rajya Sabha route to Parliament.

In 2004, Mallya fielded several candidates for the Karnataka Assembly polls under the banner of the Janata Party and chopper-hopped on the campaign trail.

One day near Bagalkot, Mallya's chopper crashed and broke up.

Mallya's then media secretary, C.B. Yeshvanth Kumar, who was waiting at the helipad to receive his boss, recalled: "I feared the worst.... I ran some distance through a dry field to the crash point, only to see him walking around the aircraft that had broken up into pieces."

All on board survived, Mallya with minor injuries to his leg. But his party suffered a debilitating blow in the elections and was virtually wiped out.

Six years down the line, Mallya did not take any chances. He knew how to return to Parliament and which parties would pave the way.

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