BENGALURU: Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Tuesday expelled her party's lone MLA in Karnataka, N Mahesh, for "violating" the party decision to vote in favour of the H D Kumaraswamy government.
"BSP MLA N Mahesh, who was instructed to vote in favour of the Kumaraswamy government in Karnataka, remained absent from the House during the trust vote which is a clear case of indiscipline and the party has taken it seriously. And thus, Mahesh has been expelled from the party with immediate effect," Mayawati tweeted in Hindi.
On Sunday, Mayawati had directed Mahesh to vote in favour of the coalition government after he had said that he would skip the trust vote in the absence of any clear instructions from the high command.
The New Indian Express had earlier reported that Mahesh is likely to hitch his star to the BJP bandwagon.
With the party walking out of the SP-BSP alliance to go it alone, and take on both the SP and BJP in the Uttar Pradesh bypolls, Mahesh had been weighing all options.
Mahesh had lost five elections before making it to the assembly in 2018, when he had fought the election in alliance with JDS.
He went on to become Primary Education Minister in the coalition government that was formed to stop the BJP from coming to power.
However, his stint as minister ended when Mayawati decided to pull out of the Congress-led Mahagathbandhan to fight the Lok Sabha elections alone. against the Congress and Samajwadi Party.
He had sought a separate seating arrangement in the assembly and extended issue-based support to the government.