Former Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa, who returned from a five-day family vacation to the Maldives this week, has received a high-end Toyota hybrid car, worth nearly Rs 1 crore. The former CM use the vehicle to tour the state in preparation for the 2023 state Assembly polls.

On Monday, when the 78-year-old veteran BJP leader returned from the Maldives, a brand new white Toyota Vellfire car was waiting at the Kempegowda International Airport to take him home. Yediyurappa has stepped down from the CM post on July 26.

The car has been registered in the name of Mythri Motors, an automobile sales business owned by Yediyurappa’s family in their home district of Shimoga. According to official RTO records, the car was registered in a south Bengaluru RTO on August 16 – two days before Yediyurappa and his family embarked on their vacation to the Maldives.

In 2016, when Yediyurappa was the state president of the BJP, he landed in a controversy after being gifted a Toyota Land Cruiser worth Rs 1.16 crore by his party colleague Murugesh Nirani.

Nirani had said the car was meant to facilitate comfortable travel to the 73-year-old Yediyurappa. The controversy resulted in Yediyurappa returning it back to Nirani.

Yediyurappa the key Lingayat leader in Karnataka who is vital to the BJP’s electoral fortunes has stepped down as CM saying he would help the BJP come to power on its own in Karnataka in the next Assembly polls.