Cong Bangalored, Gowda son walks into BJP arms

After a meeting with Chief Minister Dharam Singh late tonight, Chaturvedi is said to have left the matter to the Speaker as the House session starts tomorrow setting the stage for a show of strength.

The rebel JD(S) has shown the Governor the support of 47 of its 58 MLAs, plus six independents and five Janata Dal (United) MLAs. The BJP, the single largest party thrown up by the 2004 Karnataka Assembly polls, has 77 MLAs in its bag.

“We have elected Kumaraswamy as the leader. He will be the next Chief Minister. We will be a part of the new government. The people’s verdict had rejected the Congress, now the verdict has been honoured,” Yediyurappa said emerging from Raj Bhavan. Said Kumarawamy: “Our MLAs have expressed their feelings against continuing an alliance with the Congress. We have respected that.” The JD(S)-BJP coalition has worked out a Jammu and Kashmir model power-sharing strategy: JD(S) will have a CM for the first 20 months and the BJP the next 20, with 17 ministers each from both parties, Yediyurappa said.

Senior JD(S) leaders Deputy Chief Minister M P Prakash; Finance and Industries minister in the Dharam Singh-led coalition P G R Sindhia; education minister D Manjunath, minister and Deve Gowda’s younger son H D Revanna have so far not supported the Kumaraswamy-led faction’s takeover move. Gowda himself expressed displeasure over his son’s “independent” move. ‘‘Today is the saddest day in my 50 years of politics. What happened today is not right. I have been more hurt than when I was forced to step down as Prime Minister,’’ Deve Gowda said.

Prakash and Deve Gowda wrote to the Governor calling the JD(S)-BJP move illegal and the Congress (65 MLAs) asking for an opportunity to prove its own strength in numbers. Chief Minister Dharam Singh put up his signature stance of ‘‘there is no problem for the government’’ even late Wednesday evening. ‘‘A section of the JD(S) has met the Governor. No senior JD(S) leaders were in the group. They are with me. There is no problem for the coalition government,’’ he said.

The JD(S) talks to cobble up an alliance with the BJP have been in the pipeline since former JD(S) leader and Deputy Chief Minister Siddaramaiah left the party with a couple of supporters, in August 2005, in a split engineered by the Congress. Since then, the ambitious Kumaraswamy opened channels of communication with BJP leaders and trying to split the faction-ridden party to give the JD(S) options against the Congress tying up with Siddaramaiah.

Following meetings between Sonia Gandhi and Deve Gowda, a mini crisis was defused after the Congress decided against taking Siddaramaiah into its fold. Things came to a head again in December following the panchayat polls where the Congress decided to ally with the Siddaramiah faction.

Gowda issued an ultimatum of Feb 8 for the Congress to rethink its panchayat strategy and showed indications of moving towards the BJP for an alliance. The final coup was executed over the past two days, after Gowda visited New Delhi and failed to get an appointment with Sonia. On Tuesday morning, Kumaraswamy told the state BJP that the JD(S) was ready for an alliance with it. BJP leaders rushed to Delhi and returned to Bangalore on Tuesday night, with their national vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu. By Wednesday afternoon, the alliance had been worked out and the two parties jointly staked their claim by 7 pm.