It turned out to be a slip between the cup and the lip for the Bharatiya Janata Party as it could not muster the required number of MLAs from other parties to touch the simple majority mark in the State Assembly on Saturday.
As reality caught up with the party, its Central leaders asked State unit president and Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa to desist from going ahead with the trust vote and instead announce his decision to “quit gracefully”.
In fact, the party strategists were confident of wooing enough number of MLAs from other parties when Mr. Yeddyurappa took oath on Thursday as Chief Minister despite the party winning only 104 of the total 222 seats that went to polls as against the combined Opposition strength of 117.
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What went wrong, according to party strategists, is that they did not anticipate that the Opposition would approach the Supreme Court so quickly. “The swift response by the apex court, which set a short deadline for floor test, actually resulted in our script going awry,” observed a senior leader. According to him, this threw a spanner in the wheel of the party’s plan, as it had not prepared for a shorter deadline since Governor Vajubhai Vala had given 15 days for the floor test before the court’s intervention.
Though the party’s “influential” leaders tried to contact “gullible” MLAs from other parties, their efforts did not pay off as their parties did well in keeping their flock together, sources said.
“The meticulous manner in which the Congress and JD(S) leaders executed their flock-keeping exercise ensured that our strategies failed,” a senior BJP leader admitted. When the issue reached a complex stage, the party top leaders realised that further escalating the efforts to woo Opposition MLAs would result in sullying of the party’s image, sources said. This was particularly in the wake of the court’s monitoring the floor test process, they said.
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“We realised that things have gone out of our control by late on Friday itself. Weighing of options indicated that quitting gracefully and turning the occasion into a forum for launching the campaign for 2019 Lok Sabha polls would be more effective,” party sources said. However, leaders in Mr. Yeddyurappa’s inner circle continued the efforts to retain the government till noon. But they too gave it up later.
Now, the BJP is hoping that the JD(S)-Congress combine may be gripped by political insecurity as both the parties fought each other bitterly on the ground.