BJP basks in glow of southern sonrise

The BJP central leadership gave the green signal yesterday to its state unit to join hands with disgruntled JD(S) elements in Karnataka only after making sure that the JD(S) ‘‘breakaway group’’ led by its working president H.D. Kuamraswamy had enough numbers and would not back out—at the behest of his father HD Deve Gowda—of the plan to bring down the Congress-led government.

As it turned out, Deve Gowda’s insistence that ‘‘there was no question’’ of forming government with BJP gave a perfect cover for the operation.

While Congress was lulled into believing that Deve Gowda would not risk his secular credentials, his ambitious son was finalising the contours of the alternative government.

The parties would follow the ‘‘Kashmir formula’’. BJP would play second fiddle for the first 20 months of the tenure. While B.S. Yediyurappa will be the BJP CM 20 months down the line, the party — with 79 seats to Kumaraswamy’s 46 — will get the majority of Cabinet berths, sources said.

The BJP state unit led by H. Ananth Kumar, B.S. Yediyurappa and Jagdish Shettar had been in close touch with JD(S) for long. In fact, large sections of the JD(S) were keen on forming government with the BJP after the Assembly poll in May 2004. But Deve Gowda’s ‘‘ideological’’ position against BJP and the formation of the UPA government at the Centre prevented it. As Congress-JD(S) friction increased — it peaked when Congress decided to play footsie with Deve Gowda’s archrival Siddaramaiah’s All India Progressive Janata Dal after the zila parishad polls — BJP-JD(S) parleys intensified.

The talks became ‘‘serious’’ once BJP leaders realised Kumaraswamy’s eagerness to become CM, sources said. While Gowda talked of a February 8 deadline before taking a decision on the fate of the government, Kumaraswamy assured BJP he would topple Dharam Singh much before that.

BJP state leaders landed in Delhi to get an okay for ‘‘operation topple’’. Rajnath, said to BJP’s Chanakya who had executed similar deals in Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, told them to go ahead. He sent Venkaiah Naidu to Bangalore — it served to show BJP’s sincerity in executing the deal and reassuring Naidu that his role as ‘‘trouble-shooter’’ had not ended with Advani’s exit.

The BJP leadership here were on tenterhooks the whole day, apprehensive of Congress getting wind of the gameplan and Dharam recommending Assembly dissolution.

But the Congress’s arrogance — Gowda was not given an appointment with Sonia Gandhi despite camping in New Delhi earlier this week — came as a relief to BJP. Kumaraswamy took a delegation of 46 MLAs to meet Governor T N Chaturvedi this evening before Dharam could get his act together, and the fate of the Congress-JD(S) government was sealed. Earlier today, BJP spokesman Arun Jaitley refused to comment on the secular-saffron cocktail being brewed in Karnataka.

‘‘The crisis has nothing to do with my party; it is a crisis of the ruling coalition. We are watching closely,’’ he said.