The race to the post of the new chief minister of Karnataka remained a dead heat till late tonight, as talks between the two rival factions in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state unit remained inconclusive. The action is shifted to Delhi after the two groups failed to decide on the next chief minister.
Dharmendra Pradhan, in charge of Karnataka affairs in the BJP, said the next leader of the state legislature party would be announced on August 3 in Bangalore.
D V Sadananda Gowda, a Member of Parliament from the Udupi-Chikmagalur constituency, and Jagadish Shettar, minister for rural development and panchayat raj in the Yeddyurappa cabinet, are the front runners. While Yeddyurappa backed Gowda, Shettar has the backing of H N Ananth Kumar and several legislators from north Karnataka, cutting across caste combinations.
Gowda, 58, belongs to the powerful Vokkaliga forward community, while 56-year-old Shettar belongs to the rival Lingayat community and represents the Hubli assembly segment in north Karnataka.
The discussion between a defiant Yeddyurappa and observers, which lasted for over four hours, ended in deadlock. The state BJP legislature party meeting, which was scheduled to be held after Yeddyurappa had quit, was also postponed indefinitely.
According to party sources, Yeddyurappa is firm on his choice for the chief minister and deputy chief minister, while the central observers did not heed to his call.
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Yeddyurappa had announced just before giving his resignation letter that he had suggested to party central leaders to select Gowda as his successor.
“I have proposed Sadananda Gowda for the post of the chief minister. It is for the party’s high command to decide. I hope Gowda will be acceptable to all,” Yeddyurappa told reporters soon after giving his resignation letter to Governor H R Bhardwaj at Raj Bhavan.
Gowda, a two-term legislator in the state legislative assembly earlier (1994-2004), was also the ruling party’s state unit president and led the BJP to power in the state for the first time in the mid-term assembly polls in 2008.
Even as Yeddyurappa claimed that his proposal had the support of a majority of legislators, party observers Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh were reluctant to accept Gowda, as several legislators, especially from north Karnataka, insisted on electing Shettar as the new leader of the legislature party.
Shettar was the assembly speaker in 2008-09 and president of the party’s state unit.
The BJP legislators opposing Gowda insist that no MP should be imposed on them and that the new leader should be elected from among the 120 legislators.