By IANS,
New Delhi: A day after the Supreme Court quashed their disqualification, the 11 rebel Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators from Karnataka met senior leader Arun Jaitley in New Delhi Saturday to take up their issues with the central leadership.
According to party sources, the lawmakers in their meeting with Jaitley expressed their opposition to Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa. The source said that the MLAs were ready to vote for the BJP in a possible vote of confidence.
“We never deflected from the BJP, we are taking a step for our state. We were never against our party, but are against our leadership,” legislator Anand Asnotikar told Times Now channel.
The Supreme Court Friday quashed the disqualification of 16 Karnataka lawmakers, including 11 from the BJP and five independents, by the state assembly speaker Oct 11, 2010 hours before Yeddyurappa was to seek the confidence vote in the assembly.
The trust vote and their disqualification followed the 16 members’ withdrawal of support to Yeddyurappa.
The BJP’s Karnataka spokesperson V. Dhananjaya Kumar, meanwhile, said that there is no constitutional crisis in the state.
“I am at loss to understand from where these people see a constitutional crisis because there is no complaint so far made by anybody that the BJP government in the state is not working as per the provisions of the constitution,” Kumar told the TV channel.
“They may be rebels, but they are not out of the party fold. The point is that they are reckoned as BJP MLAs on record of the assembly and also as per the judgment of the Supreme Court,” he said.
Attacking the Congress for claiming the rebel MLAs to be on its side, Kumar called it an effect of their poor performance in the assembly elections, the results of which were announced Friday.
“It is height of false statements being made. I think they are upset with the worst kind of defeat they have faced yesterday (Friday). Congress will have to look into their organisational matters better instead of making all kinds of tall claims and making allegations against the BJP,” he added.