MLA resigns from House
Nearly 50 MLAs of the Congress party in Karnataka led by its party leader Siddaramaiah late on Tuesday night courted arrest amidst high drama staging demonstrations in front of Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa’s house. The MLAs were released later in the night.
The Congress MLAs descended in front of CM's house after one of their MLAs resigned his seat on Tuesday, allegedly under the influence of BJP party’s – ‘Operation Kamala’ a strategy being chiselled fine to effect defections in the opposition parties.
During the day, Congress MLA, S V Ramachandra of Jagalur assembly constituency in Davangere district gave up his seat which he had won on the Congress symbol during the 2008 assembly polls.
This is the second time within a week that BJP has managed to orchestrate their strategy against the opposition parties. During last week, JD(S) MLA from Channapatna M C Ashwath, had abstained himself during the crucial second trust vote won by Yeddyurappa by on October 14. Ashwath later resigned his seat and thereby reduce the strength of the state Assembly
Senior leaders of Congress party being arrested on Tuesday include D K Shivakumar and R V Deshpande among several others. The Congress leaders came down heavily against the BJP party stating that there is high level of horse trading in the state under ‘Operation Kamala’.
With the resignation of the two MLAs as part of the ‘Operation Kamala’ to ensure stability to the Yeddyurappa regime, the effective strength of the 224-member Karnataka assembly is now reduced to 206 in view of the disqualification of the 11 BJP MLAs and 5 Independents on the morning of October 11, when the assembly session was summoned for the floor test.
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The Division Bench of Karnataka High Court, which heard separate writ petitions filed by the 16 disqualified MLAs on October 11 against the orders issued by the Assembly Speaker K G Bopaiah, had posted the petitions pertaining to the 11 BJP MLAs to a third judge following a division between Chief Justice K S Kehar and Justice N Kumar, who constituted the Division Bench.
Justice V G Sabhahit has been named to head the single judge Bench which will hear the case on Wednesday.