BENGALURU: The collapsing Congress-JDS coalition has thrown up the opportunity for the BJP to derive the highest gains from it but the saffron camp is not celebrating, at least not just yet. Despite the number of legislators withdrawing support to the coalition increasing steadily by the day, the BJP is still not confident of taking the final plunge and staking claim to form the government.
In theory, the BJP has 107 MLAs as of now, but given the flip-flop history of two independent MLAs and the uncertainty that rebel MLAs of the coalition bring with them, the party has decided to tread cautiously.
At a legislature party meeting held on Tuesday, the party decided to mount pressure on Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy with protests on Wednesday, demanding his resignation. Another key decision was to make a representation to Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar and Governor Vajubhai Vala over the political crisis. “At 1pm, a top delegation of the party will meet with the Governor to apprise him of the political situation and to request him to intervene. At 3 pm, another delegation will meet the Speaker to pressure him to accept the resignations of our fellow MLAs,” said Arvind Limbavalli, general secretary of the party, briefing the media after the meeting.
“These MLAs have deserted the party which nurtured them. What is the guarantee that they won’t pull back from us once we form the government? Moreover, we are yet to verify who are the flight risks and who are here to stay,” said a top office-bearer of the BJP. He added that Congress’ decision to move for disqualification may pressure some MLAs to return to the coalition. “The lesser spoken about the two independents the better,” said another BJP leader. The JDS-Congress, as well as the BJP, seem to share the same opinion about the two independent MLAs - R Shankar and H Nagesh -- given their track record of flip-flops.
The bigger concern is also how BJP’s own leaders would react to accommodating outsiders in plum posts. “Forming our government is the unanimous goal of everybody in the party currently, but once we come to power, the fight for relevance and position will begin. We do not want a similar situation to what the coalition is facing,” said the office-bearer pointing out to what is stopping the BJP from taking that step towards staking claim to form the government.
The BJP has decided to carefully examine each of its options and proceed only when it is confident of no threats to the government it intends to form constitutionally. This, especially after the embarrassment it had to face in May 2018 when party state president B S Yeddyurappa was forced to resign as Chief Minister in less than two days of taking oath for want of numbers.