By IANS
Bangalore : Karnataka’s squabbling ruling partners, Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), will hold separate meetings Monday to decide their moves amid a row over their proposed power transfer Wednesday.
On Sunday, the JD-S called a meeting of its legislators Monday evening while BJP ministers will meet during the day.
The two meetings will follow talks between BJP vice-president Yashwant Sinha and JD-S president H.D. Deve Gowda scheduled for late Sunday evening.
“The JD-S legislature party will deliberate and decide on the power transfer issue,” Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy said.
“There are certain things that need to be considered by our legislators. I can’t react on them openly,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.
On whether he will resign on Oct 2 to make way for a BJP chief minister on Oct 3 as agreed 20 months back, Kumaraswamy said: “I will take a decision which would be appreciated by five crore (50 million) people of the state.”
He declined to elaborate whether this meant he will stick to his word or whether he was sarcastically responding to some BJP leaders’ statements that “five crore people of Karnataka” want a BJP chief minister.
The BJP ministers’ meeting will decide whether they would resign on Oct 2 if the talks between Sinha and Deve Gowda fail and Kumaraswamy does not quit.
Meanwhile, Kumaraswamy and his JD-S were in a jubilant mood Sunday night as the party did exceedingly well in civic body polls held across the state Friday.
“The party’s performance shows that the support to JD-S is not confined to rural areas,” Kumaraswamy said.
“For the first time people in urban areas have voted in large numbers for JD-S as shown by our performance,” he said.
Voting was held for 4,920 seats in 209 civic bodies and JD-S emerged as the single largest party bagging more than 1,300 seats with 90 percent results out.
BJP was third with over 900 seats and Congress in second place with over 1,200 seats.
BJP spokesperson Sureshkumar told IANS that his party was happy with the performance.
“We contested in over 3,000 seats and not all the seats. Hence, our show is satisfactory,” he said.
The Congress suffered humiliation as it drew blank in the civic body in Gurmitkal, the hometown of its state party president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Kharge attributed the dismal show in Gurmiktal to the alleged misuse of power and use of money by the ruling coalition partners who shared the spoils in his hometown.