Former Minister and BJP MLC A.H. Vishwanath on Tuesday said he will file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the High Court order that disqualified him from becoming a Minister.
“I am waiting for the full text of the High Court ruling. I will discuss with my lawyers and question the order in the Supreme Court in the coming days”, he told reporters in Bengaluru.
While ruling that Mr. Vishwanath was “ex-facie disqualified” from being appointed as Minister, the High Court had pointed out that no such disqualification was in operation against two other MLCs – R. Shankar and N. Nagaraju (MTB) – who had been duly elected to the Legislative Council from the Assembly in June 2020.
Mr. Vishwanath, who was among the aspirants for a Ministerial berth in the B.S. Yediyurappa government, on Tuesday publicly bemoaned the dropping of his name from the list of candidates chosen by the BJP’s State Core Committee for nomination as candidates for elections to the Legislative Council from Assembly.
“My name was the first in the list of four candidates along with N. Nagaraj (MTB), Shankar and Pratap Simha Nayak. But, when the approved list came back (from Delhi), my name had been replaced with Sunil Vallyapure”, Mr. Vishwanath regretted and added that when he confronted Chief Minister B.S. Yeddiyurappa over the development, the Chief Minister blamed it on some people in Delhi, but promised to nominate him to the Council.
Had his name not been dropped from the list of the candidates and had he been elected to the Legislative Council from the Assembly along with the three others, Mr .Vishwanath said the situation would have been different.
Mr. Vishwanath lashed out at the State Advocate General for the failure of the State to defend them properly in the legal battle in the High Court. “The Advocate General did not take up our case seriously. He has not even spoken to us”, Mr. Vishwanath regretted.
Without naming anybody, Mr. Vishwanath regretted that the very people who had benefited from their actions by forming an alternative government in Karnataka had “failed to come to their rescue in difficult times”.
He said he had been nominated to the Legislative Council because of the support extended to him by the Sangh Parivar. He replied in the positive when he was asked if all the 17 new entrants to the BJP were in his support.
Also, Mr. Vishwanath sought to clarify that he and 16 other coalition MLAs had not resigned to prop up an alternative government to become Ministers. He said the government fell because of internal contradictions that surfaced later with former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy blaming the Congress while former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was holding Mr. Kumaraswamy responsible for the collapse.
“What happened those days was a mutiny against the ‘demon government’. We did not bring down the government so that we can ourselves become Ministers in the new government”, Mr. Vishwanath said.
