By IANS
Bangalore/New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) hopes of making Karnataka its gateway to south India were dashed Monday as its Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa was forced to quit just seven days after assuming office as its coalition partner, the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S), withdrew support.
In a dramatic turnaround, the JD-S announced it would vote against the BJP-led government when the assembly takes up a confidence vote, leading to the fall of the second government in the state in less than two months.
Yeddyurappa, instead of seeking the trust vote, rushed to Governor Rameshwar Thakur and submitted his resignation. BJP sources in New Delhi said he was following party president Rajnath Singh’s advice.
For the embattled BJP, it was an unhappy repeat of its 1996 attempt at the national level when Atal Bihari Vajpayee quit as prime minister 13 days after being sworn in as he could not muster majority support in the Lok Sabha.
Yeddyurappa took oath Nov 12 amid much cheering by BJP supporters in the presence of party stalwarts Rajnath Singh, L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj, Yashwant Sinha, Venkaiah Naidu and others.
“Karnataka holds a lot of promise for our party,” a beaming Advani said soon after.
“Yeddyuappa’s government will last the full 19 months (of the assembly’s tenure),” Rajnath Singh declared with confidence, responding to questions on the wisdom of trusting JD-S, which had only three weeks earlier gone back on its word to transfer power to BJP.
“Our support is unconditional,” JD-S president H.D. Deve Gowda and his son, former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, maintained Oct 27 when Yeddyurappa staked claim to form the government with the JD-S support.
It took just seven days for the wily Deve Gowda to snip the lotus, the BJP’s election symbol, from blooming in Karnataka, which he considers to be his and his family’s political backyard.
Just two hours before Yeddyurappa was to move the one-line confidence motion in the assembly Monday, the former prime minister ensured Kumaraswamy issued a whip to his party legislators to vote against the motion.
This was surprising. On Sunday, Kumaraswamy said after meeting Yeddyurappa that all differences had been sorted out and the coalition government would run smoothly for the next 19 months.
“There is no problem at all,” was his curt reply to reporters’ queries.
“We have discussed all the issues and are confident that the JD-S will continue to support us,” was Yeddyurappa’s response to reporters after the meeting.
Kumaraswamy changed the tune Monday morning after issuing the whip to his party legislators.
“There’s no going back on the decision to withdraw support. It’s all over, even if they (BJP) come for negotiations, it will not fructify.”
His said: “Yeddurappa does not want to agree to the 12-point MoU (memorandum of understanding, detailing conditions for support) mooted by the JD-S. He wants to take Sriramulu (former tourism minister who had levelled attempt-to-murder charges against Kumaraswamy) back into the cabinet. How can JD-S support this government?”
An angry Yeddyurappa hit back after submitting his resignation to the governor.
“Why do you want mining and geology portfolio? Had we not worked properly with you for 20 months? Did we do anything against your wishes during the term?
“Had we given the mines and geology portfolio, we perhaps would have saved the government. We don’t want that. We don’t want a single change to the agreement that we reached 20 months ago,” Yeddyurappa told reporters after meeting Governor Thakur.
“We will go before the people’s court. They know who betrayed us. We are confident of getting more than 150 seats (in the 225-member assembly). We will teach them a lesson and not rest till the party gets a majority,” Yeddyurappa declared as he ended his seven-day rule.
While Monday’s developments bring political uncertainty back in the state, Deve Gowda arrived in New Delhi, with JD-S sources hinting at negotiations with the Congress, the party’s ally before Kumaraswamy pulled down the coalition government in February 2006.