By IANS
New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Thursday deferred any decision on the stand-off over power transfer in Karnataka till Saturday even as it said there could be no negotiations on the power sharing agreement with the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S).
“The BJP parliamentary board will meet again Saturday morning. We have postponed taking any decision as JD-S president (H.D. Deve Gowda) called BJP president Rajnath Singh to say he would have talks with him after the meeting of his party’s political affairs committee Friday,” Yashwant Sinha, party vice-president and in-charge of Karnataka affairs, told reporters.
“The arrangement arrived at 20 months ago between the two parties has to be implemented. This is non-negotiable. The parliamentary board has emphasised that Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa is our chief ministerial candidate. This is also non-negotiable,” he added.
According to the arrangement between the two parties, Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy of the JD-S was to hand over reins of power to the BJP on Oct 3, but he has refused to do so.
All 17 BJP ministers in his cabinet have submitted their resignation to him.
Sinha, who was in Bangalore for parleys last week, said the parliamentary board had approved all actions taken by the Karnataka unit of BJP over the last few days.
Asked till when the BJP was ready to wait before withdrawing support to the Kumaraswamy government, Sinha said, “The BJP is moving step by step. We are taking calibrated steps. We have not said anything to the media without informing them first.”
Commenting on speculation that BJP could seek support of some disgruntled JD-S legislators and other parties to form a government, Sinha said, “We will not engineer breakaways.”
He said that the core issue in the continuing row was that of political conduct. “We want to give him (Deve Gowda) an opportunity before we take any decision,” he said, adding that the future course of action will be decided on the outcome of Saturday’s meeting between Rajnath Singh and Deve Gowda.
However, BJP sources admitted the chance of Kumaraswamy transferring power to the party was slim. “Going by their stance in Karnataka and also in Delhi, it does not seem that they will hand over power,” said a party leader.
Asked about the possibility of a mid-term poll in Karnataka, Sinha said, “As a political party we should be ready for polls.”