The much-anticipated meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party's core committee scheduled to be held in Delhi on Saturday to decide on providing a suitable political position to the former Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa has been put off. The next date of the meeting is yet to be fixed.
The meeting had been called by BJP president Nitin Gadkari to resolve the crisis due to the power tussle in the Karnataka unit of the party.
Officially, the party State leaders have cited their busy schedule during the crucial byelection to the Udupi-Chikmagalur Lok Sabha constituency to be held on March 18 as the reason for putting off the meeting. “We are hard pressed for time as this byelection is crucial for the party for several reasons. It is also a prestige fight for Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda as he represented this constituency earlier.
Besides, all the Assembly segments coming under this Parliamentary seat are represented by the BJP MLAs and hence it is a must-win battle for the party,” sources maintained.
However, it is learnt that the party leaders do not want to precipitate internal matters till the byelection, as a defeat here would affect the party's morale.
Sources maintained that they cannot rule out the possibility of the core committee meeting being held a few days ahead of the bypoll if the top leaders are done with their campaign work in this Lok Sabha constituency by then.
One more theory that is doing rounds in the party circles is that the leaders may be waiting for the Central Empowered Committee to submit its views to the Supreme Court on whether there is a need to order a CBI probe against Mr. Yeddyurappa with respect to allegations of illegal mining in Karnataka.
If the CEC recommends a CBI probe and the Supreme Court accepts it, then Mr. Yeddyurappa would be in a politically tough position and may not be able to continue with his aggressive style of politics, political observers feel.
