The former Chief Minister and Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) president, B.S. Yeddyurappa, sees the hand of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) general secretary Ananth Kumar in the delay in accepting the resignations of the BJP MLAs by Speaker K.G. Bopaiah.
Addressing presspersons here on Wednesday, he said that Mr. Ananth Kumar and other BJP leaders had conspired to delay the acceptance of the resignations submitted by 13 BJP MLAs on Tuesday.
Reacting sharply to the time taken by the Speaker to accept the resignations, Mr. Yeddyurappa said that by doing so, Mr. Bopaiah had brought disrepute to the prestigious constitutional post of the Speaker.
Mr. Yeddyurappa said that when he went to submit his resignation from the primary membership of the BJP, Mr. Bopaiah accepted it without any delay.
“But when the MLAs supporting me submitted their resignations, the Speaker came up with excuses only to delay the acceptance of the resignations. These are double standards of the Speaker,” he said. To a question, he asserted that he had no plans to topple the government, and that he had not forced the MLAs to resign.
On the possibilities of Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar presenting the budget, Mr. Yeddyurappa said that if he had the majority in the House, then he was free to present the budget.
‘Expulsion’
Mr. Yeddyurappa tried to downplay the controversy surrounding his reported expulsion by the founder-president of KJP Prasanna Kumar from the post of State president of the unit.
He said that he had followed all legal procedures before taking over charge as president from Mr. Kumar, thus Mr. Kumar had no powers to expel him from the party.
“We have brought the matter to the notice of the Chief Election Commissioner,” he said and added that the episode was politically motivated.
Defending his decision to float a regional party, Mr. Yeddyurappa claimed that as the people had lost faith in national parties, he had launched the regional party.
