Members of the Udupi district unit of the BJP staged a dharna in front of the party office here on Tuesday demanding that Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy submit his resignation.
Addressing the protestors, Mattar Ratnakar Hegde, president of district unit of BJP, said that after the resignation of MLAs, the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition government had lost its majority in the Assembly. The coalition now had the support of only 103 MLAs, while the BJP had 107 MLAs. Thus, the BJP had gained majority in the Assembly. Despite this, Mr. Kumaraswamy was shamelessly continuing in power, he said.
The allegation of Congress leaders that the BJP had forced the MLAs to resign was wrong. The MLAs had got fed up with the functioning of the coalition government and had voluntarily resigned. All the Ministers of both the Congress and the Janata Dal(S) had resigned solely to entice the rebel MLAs with Ministerial berths. This was nothing but murder of democracy, he said.
Even otherwise the coalition government had lost its mandate to rule after both the Congress and the Janata Dal(S) won only one seat each in the recent parliamentary elections, while the BJP won 25 seats. This showed that the people in the State were with the BJP, he said.
Despite having lost majority, the coalition government was taking decisions on matters connected to the sale of 3,667 acres to the JSW Group. H.D. Revanna, Public Works Minister, was taking decisions on promotion of 962 engineers. All this was blatantly unethical, he said.
Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar was clandestinely helping the coalition government by delaying the acceptance of the resignation letters of MLAs. His tactics were aimed at saving the coalition government. Mr. Ramesh Kumar should not behave in a partisan manner, Mr. Hegde said.
Sheela K. Shetty, vice-president of the Zilla Panchayat, Baikady Surprasad Shetty and other BJP leaders were present.
