The core committee of the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP), which met here on Wednesday ahead of Thursday’s state executive committee meeting, resolved to support Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s candidature for the prime minister’s post and to be a part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
KJP campaign committee chairman V. Dhananjaya Kumar told presspersons that the party, however, was not in favour of merger with the BJP. He said, “As of now, we have decided to be a part of the NDA after Mr. Modi was anointed prime ministerial candidate by the BJP. The focus is on strengthening the party base,” he said.
The state executive committee is expected to formalise the decisions of the core committee here on Thursday. Even as KJP has been claiming that it was “not interested” in merger with BJP, BJP MLC Lehar Singh Siroya, a close aide of KJP president B.S. Yeddyurappa, is learnt to have gone to New Delhi on Wednesday afternoon.
Mr. Siroya, according to sources in KJP, is expected to hold parlays with BJP national president Rajnath Singh about Mr. Yeddyurappa’s comeback. The move to send Mr. Siroya to meet central BJP leaders comes in the wake of opposition from certain quarters of State BJP for Mr. Yeddyurappa’s return.
Sources said that though Mr. Yeddyurappa was keen to refasten the broken cord with BJP, there is opposition within the party, particularly from non-BJP cadres including three of the six MLAs — B.R. Patil, Gurupadappa Nagamarapally and Guru Patil.
