Comments
A serious verbal clash erupted on Thursday between Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy and Opposition leader BS Yeddyurappa.
Close on the heels of BJP’s State unit empowering Yeddyurappa to take appropriate decisions on forming government if the JD(S)-Congress government falls.
Yeddyurappa’s statement that the saffron party is well prepared and is planning to use ‘army style’ operations to poach Congress and JDS MLAs to topple the coalition government has triggered a verbal war.
After meeting Water Resources Minister DK Shivakumar in hospital, Kumaraswamy told reporters that Yeddyurappa will have to face the consequences if he failed to ‘watch his words’ and ‘act his age’.
“The BJP and Yeddyurappa have crossed all limits. They are telling some of our MLAs that they will take them to resorts in Mumbai and Pune and bring them back to Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru for a floor test. What is this?” the Chief Minister asked.
“Yeddyurappa and his party men are provoking us,” said Kumaraswamy. He further said that the BJP is desperate and using every trick to engineer mass defections from the coalition to form its Government.
Yeddyurappa, on Thursday morning, countered Kumaraswamy by calling him the most “corrupt” Chief Minister whose family is into moneymaking business only.
Reacting to this tirade, Kumaraswamy said, “My family has a long history of serving Karnataka people. We have been in politics for the past 60 years. We have always tried to protect the resources of the State. Whereas, Yeddyurappa has looted the same resources when he was chief minister. What moral rights does he have to call me and others corrupt.”
Crisis blows over
Throughout this month, Minister Ramesh and his MLA brother Satish Jarkiholi (both Congress MLAs from Belagavi) had kept the coalition government on tenterhooks by threatening to revolt. This led to infighting in Congress party in Karnataka and rattled the Janata Dal(S)-Congress coalition government.
The disgruntled Jarkiholi brothers came out in the open on Wednesday to announce that they have no plan to quit the Congress and were satisfied by the party’s initiative to settle their demand.
After the party’s high command intervened on Wednesday, the Jarkiholi brothers dropped their demands and have come forth with a fresh set of demands — reservation quota hike for STs from 3 per cent to 7.5 per cent, a Cabinet berth for an ST leader from Ballari, and appointment of a community leader to Karnataka Public Service Commission.
The crisis occurred over Belagavi district politics and Karnataka Water Resources minister DK Shivakumar’s interference in the district politics.
KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao in an emergency press meet clarified that MLAs quitting Congress party is just a rumour.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.