Cong heads into crisis after 2 MLAs quit, Siddaramaiah goes for a headcount
Kumaraswamy, who is holidaying in the United States, blamed the BJP for the exit of lawmakers from his alliance partner, Congress’s party, but underscored that the BJP’s effort to get lawmakers to cross sides and pull down his government would remain a dream.
Karnataka’s HD Kumaraswamy government appeared to hurtle into a crisis on Monday when two Congress legislators Anand Singh and Ramesh Jarkiholi sent across their resignation from the state assembly.
Kumaraswamy, who is holidaying in the United States, blamed the BJP for the exit of lawmakers from his alliance partner, Congress’s party, but underscored that the BJP’s effort to get lawmakers to cross sides and pull down his government would remain a dream.
Former chief minister and BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa, who had earlier underscored that his party did not want him to pull down the teetering coalition, said he had heard of the resignation through the news. But he predicted there would be more resignations.
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“I know for certain that there are 20 dissidents in the coalition. We will have to wait and see what they do and take a call on whether to stake a claim to form the government after that,” Yeddyurappa said. The BJP has 104 seats in the assembly as against 78 of the Congress – after accounting for the two resignations today - and 37 of the JDS. The BSP and an Independent lawmaker also support the coalition.
The coalition government is still way above the majority mark despite the two exits from the assembly but there is a realisation in the Congress that it cannot take this status for granted. Siddaramaiah, the Congress Legislature Party chief, has summoned a meeting of party legislators at his Bengaluru house for a headcount, according to news agency ANI.
An influential Belgavi leader Ramesh Jarkiholi was one of the four lawmakers who had absented themselves from Siddaramaiah’s meetings that he had called earlier this year after speculation that the Congress was going to lose legislators to the BJP.
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A month after Congress rebel legislator Umesh Jadhav resigned in March, Ramesh Jarkiholi had announced that he was also on his way out. “I have said that I will resign, I have to only decide when I will do this,” Jarkiholi told reporters in April.
The Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) alliance government in the state has faced a turbulent time since it came to power in the state on May 23, 2018, after the state assembly elections. The BJP was and continues to be the largest party in the assembly but the Congress and JDS had teamed up to ensure that the BJP’s BS Yeddyurappa could stay put.
Yeddyurappa resigned moments before facing the trust vote, leading to HD Kumaraswamy taking oath at a grand ceremony that turned into one of the biggest platforms for opposition parties, even traditional rivals, to unite against Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party. The opposition’s grand alliance never really took off except for Uttar Pradesh. But the alliance between Mayawati’s BSP and Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party too unravelled after its humiliating defeat in the national elections.
The Congress-JDS alliance didn’t click in Karnataka either in the recently held Lok Sabha polls. The BJP bagged 25 of the 28 seats along with an Independent backed by it leaving just one seat each to the two coalition partners Congress and JDS.
This verdict is believed to have spelt doomed the coalition government. Last month, former prime minister and Kumaraswamy’s father HD Deve Gowda suggested that the coalition would collapse well before elections but later backtracked, insisting that he was talking about civic polls.
