Bangalore  : Karnataka, hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons for months now, is witnessing a peculiar playout between the new Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda and Governor H.R. Bhardwaj these days.

What Gowda vehemently denies, Bhardwaj coolly confirms.

Early this month, Gowda asserted, more than once, that Bhardwaj had not asked him to act on a government-appointed panel’s findings about massive land grab in Bangalore and across the state.

A few days later, Bhardwaj told reporters that he had, indeed, told Gowda to take action on the findings of the panel, which was headed by retired additional chief secretary of the state V. Balasubramanian.

The Balasubramanian panel said in its report submitted in July that around 1.2 million acres of government land, including 40,000 acres in Bangalore, have been encroached upon in the state.

The then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government headed by B.S. Yeddyurappa rejected the findings on the ground that the contents were made public before the government could study them.

In the second case, Gowda Saturday denied that Bhardwaj had summoned him for discussion on the continuance of Forest Minister C.P. Yogeshwar, who is alleged to have cheated scores of people of millions rupees by promising residential plots in Bangalore’s outskirts.

Gowda told reporters that no one had asked for any information on ‘Mega City’ project which Yogeshwar had floated along with several partners.

Within 24 hours, Bhardwaj told reporters Sunday that he had sought information from Gowda on charges against Yogeshwar.

Gowda met Bhardwaj later Saturday amid speculation that the governor had summoned him over the Yogeshwar issue following a representation by people who had invested money in the ‘Mega City’ project but had not got house sites.

“You know the constitutional position. I cannot act on my own against a minister. Appointment or dismissal of the minister is on the advice of the chief minister,” the governor, who is often dubbed by the ruling BJP as “Congress agent”, said on the margins of a function here.

“Hence, I have asked the chief minister for information (on Yogeshwar),” said Bhardwaj, a former central law minister known to be loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

The Yogeshwar issue is becoming a major headache for Gowda, who Aug 4 took over from Yeddyurappa, BJP’s first chief minister in the state.

Yeddyurappa quit July 31 after being indicted by the Lokayukta (ombudsman) in the illegal mining scam in the state.

Yogeshwar had ‘defected’ to the BJP from the Congress in 2009 when Yeddyurappa was chief minister. He is believed to have become a minister in the Gowda cabinet on Yeddyurappa’s insistence.

The central corporate affairs ministry’s Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) has concluded its probe into ‘Mega City’ scandal.

“I have not seen the full report. Prima facie, it is serious,” Corporate Affairs Minister M. Veerappa Moily, a former Congress chief minister of the state, said in Bangalore last week.

Yogeshwar has denied the charges and claimed that SFIO had not sought any information from him.

Bhardwaj’s stance on the Yogeshwar and Balasubramanian panel findings has pitted BJP against the governor once again.

State BJP chief K.S. Eshwarappa, a bitter critic of Bhardwaj’s style of functioning, Sunday attacked him saying he should know that governors must function within certain limits and not interfere in the government’s work.

“I will write to the president to urge her to appoint as governors only those who know the constitutional limits imposed on their functioning,” Eshwarappa told reporters in Shimoga, about 280 kms from here.