By IANS
Bangalore/New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party Wednesday virtually rejected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s plea to give Karnataka Governor Rameshwar Thakur “reasonable time” to decide on the party’s claim to form new coalition ministry with the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S).
The party set a new deadline of Wednesday evening for Thakur to invite the BJP/JD-S combine leader B.S. Yeddyurappa and threatened to take the 129 supporting legislators to President Pratibha Patil in New Delhi Thursday if he fails to accede to their demand.
The threat was held out by senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj in Bangalore within hours of Manmohan Singh suggesting to a BJP delegation led by L.K. Advani and party chief Rajnath Singh that Thakur be given “reasonable time” to decide on the claim.
Sushma Swaraj told a rally in Bangalore that Thakur should swear-in the BJP leader as chief minister and give him seven to 10 days to prove majority on the floor of the state assembly. The BJP organised rally to protest delay in inviting Yeddyurappa to form the coalition ministry. She later met Thakur to discuss the issue.
Despite the threat, Thakur is unlikely to invite the BJP/JD-S alliance for ministry formation before the new deadline ends, as he is yet to present a report on the state’s political crisis to the president. Thursday is a state holiday as Karnataka celebrates the state formation day. The governor would that day be busy for the whole day with the official functions.
In New Delhi, BJP vice-president M. Venkaiah Naidu told reporters after a 30-minute meeting with Manmohan Singh that “the prime minister suggested that the governor be given reasonable time. But we told him that four days have passed since we handed over the letter (to form a) government headed by B.S. Yeddyurappa.”
Governor Thakur has not shown any hurry to decide on the BJP/JD-S claim and is yet to send his report on the state situation to the president. “I will send it in a day or two,” he told Yeddyurappa Tuesday.
While Thakur decides on the claim, the Congress has also kept up pressure on him to dissolve the assembly, which still has 20 months’ life left.
Congress’ Karnataka in-charge Prithviraj Chavan met Thakur in Bangalore Wednesday morning and pointed out to him that the BJP and JD-S were now coming together after falling apart and bitterly fighting in the last three weeks.
“It is an opportunistic alliance and cannot be expected to provide a stable and clean government, and hence the combine’s claim should not be entertained,” Chavan told a party meeting after holding talks with the governor.
The JD-S/BJP coalition had split – only to come together now — when JD-S chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy refused to give up the post for the BJP after 20 months in accordance with the agreement between the two parties. The state is now under president’s rule and the assembly has been kept in suspended animation.
Kumaraswamy and his father, JD-S president H.D. Deve Gowda somersaulted Saturday and extended support to a Yeddyurappa-led government, after refusing to do so for three weeks.
The two parties staked claim to form government the same day, and Monday presented 120 supporting legislators to Thakur to establish their majority in the 225-member assembly.
According to indications from the Congress party, Governor Thakur in his report is unlikely to recommend to the president any course of action.
He may only send a factual report on the claim, the numbers the two parties presented, and the legal opinion he has received from constitutional experts in the state, and leave the matter to be decided by the president.
The possible reason for Thakur to opt for such a course is the complicated nature of the case.
It does not strictly fall within the ambit of the earlier Karnataka and Bihar cases where in the Supreme Court held that majority of a party or combination of parties should be tested on the floor of the assembly and not in Raj Bhavans.
In neither case had the coalition partners come together again after falling apart over power sharing arrangement. In both cases, the concerned governors had recommended dismissal of the governments without giving an opportunity to prove the majority in the assembly.
But in Karnataka, not only did the coalition collapse, but both parties also wrote formal letters to the governor seeking immediate dissolution of the assembly.
Informed sources say that legal opinion given to Thakur is divided – some have said he has no option but to invite the combine to form the government. Others are of the view that he need not do so given the way the two parties fell apart and quarrelled in the last three weeks.