By IANS
Bangalore/New Delhi : As the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) Saturday expressed its support for a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in Karnataka, senior JD-S leader M.P. Prakash in New Delhi urged Governor Rameshwar Thakur not to honour his party’s letter of support.
Prakash told a hurriedly called press conference in New Delhi that the JD-S letter of support has “no validity” and hence the governor should not act on it.
The senior JD-S leader faxed a letter to the governor saying that he was returning to Bangalore Saturday evening and should be heard before the governor took any decision on government formation.
In a new political twist in the state, former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy of the JD-S, who was forced to quit early this month after the BJP withdrew support when he reneged on his promise to hand over power to it, met state BJP chief D.V. Sadananda Gowda and other leaders Saturday morning and gave them a letter of support.
Kumaraswamy’s move is seen as a desperate attempt to scuttle efforts of Prakash for a tie up with the Congress. Prakash had met senior Congress leaders in New Delhi Tuesday and received a positive response to his efforts to form an alternate Congress-JD-S coalition government.
Prakash was in New Delhi again Friday evening hoping to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel to continue his efforts to avoid early polls to the assembly which is under suspended animation since Oct 9 when the state was brought under president’s rule following Kumaraswamy’s resignation.
Prakash told reporters that he hoped JD-S president H.D. Deve Gowda, who prides himself on his secular credentials, would not approve of Kumaraswamy’s latest efforts to align with the BJP again.
Meanwhile, the latest turn of events has left both the BJP and JD-S leaders in New Delhi surprised and confused.
BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told IANS in the national capital: “I am not commenting right away. Let’s wait for a while. Maybe we may have something to say by 4 p.m. (when the JD-S is scheduled to give its support letter to the governor).”
JD-S leaders in the national capital, including party president and former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda — who also arrived in New Delhi Friday — remained incommunicado.
The party’s spokesperson and general secretary Kunwar Danish Ali had apparently switched off his phone.
Deve Gowda had suspended Kumaraswamy, his son, and 49 other party legislators in February 2006 when they defied him to form a collation government with the BJP.
Kumaraswamy is to submit a letter to the governor expressing his party’s support to a BJP-led government with B.S. Yediyurappa as chief minister.
Yediyurappa was deputy chief minister in the earlier JD-S-BJP coalition government.