By IANS
Bangalore/New Delhi : Coalition partners Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were on the verge of a formal break-up of their 20-month alliance in Karnataka Friday with the JD-S calling for a legislature session on Oct 18 and the BJP setting Saturday as deadline for power transfer to it.
Ignoring the fact that 17 BJP ministers had submitted their resignations to him, Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy held a ‘cabinet’ meeting of only his party ministers and decided to hold a session of the legislature on Oct 18, apparently to prove his majority.
The BJP reacted sharply to this decision saying the JD-S should hand over chief ministership to it by Saturday evening or it would go ahead with plans to ensure an early assembly poll.
The party may also consider directing all its 79 members in the assembly to quit to force dissolution of the house before Oct 18.
“All these are to be discussed with our central leaders and decided upon,” Deputy Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa of the BJP said, reacting to Kumaraswamy’s move to convene the legislature session.
Kumaraswamy and Yediyurappa flew to Delhi later in the day to talk to their party leaders.
Yediyurappa told reporters in Delhi that he and other state leaders had told the party’s central leadership that the issue should resolved by Saturday evening one way or the other and it should not be prolonged.
“We have set a deadline of Saturday evening for ourselves to resolve the issue and told our central leaders of it.
“If the problem persists, then we will work out plans to go to the people for their verdict,” he said.
The JD-S justified holding the cabinet meeting in the absence of the 17 BJP ministers, who stayed away as they had given their resignations on Tuesday to force the chief minister to honour his word on power transfer.
Kumaraswamy was to hand over the chief minister’s post to the BJP on Oct 3 as per the agreement he had reached with it in February 2006 when forming the JD-S-BJP coalition government.
Education Minister Basavraj Horatti said Friday he did not find anything wrong in going ahead with the meeting, saying the BJP ministers had been informed about it.
He also said the legislature session being convened on Oct 18 was not a special one. It had been decided earlier to hold a session in October, he told reporters after the meeting.
However, Yediyurappa maintained he and other BJP ministers had not received any official information about the meeting.
In New Delhi, the JD-S national executive met and heard Kumaraswamy’s reasons for not stepping down in favour of the BJP.
The decision of the meeting will be conveyed to BJP president Rajnath Singh by JD-S president, former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, Saturday morning in Delhi.
JD-S sources said the Gowda-Rajnath Singh meeting will be a mere formality as the BJP is unlikely to climb down from its stand that power has to be transferred to it as per the February 2006 understanding and no fresh conditions will be entertained.
Meanwhile, the main opposition party in the state, Congress, met Governor Rameshwar Thakur and sought his intervention to end the political impasse that has brought the administration to a standstill.
There was intense speculation in Bangalore Friday that the Congress at the central level was against supporting the Kumaraswamy ministry and would prefer a seat arrangement with the JD-S as and when the polls were held.
Congress leaders in the state, however, said they had no such information.
In New Delhi too, it was clear that the Congress had adopted a wait-and-watch policy. Party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters that the Congress would “wait for the coalition to collapse”. He said that both the parties — the BJP and the JD-S — have “betrayed the common man”.
“We are watching the situation with a close eye and a sad eye,” he added.
When it was put to Singhvi that some Congress leaders were not averse to a tie-up with JD-S that would help the Kumaraswamy government survive, Singhvi said: “These are individual views”.