Power struggle between Siddaramaiah & Kumaraswamy behind K'taka political crisis: BJP

It is the "power struggle" between Congress leader and former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah and current incumbent HD Kumaraswamy which has resulted in a political crisis in the state, senior BJP leader and Union minister Pralhad Joshi said Sunday.

Dubbing the Congress's claim of a BJP hand behind the resignation of ruling alliance MLAs to destabilise the government in the state as "bogus", Joshi said, "All this is happening because the Congress has become leaderless and rather than blaming others, they should settle their house first."

There is complete "anarchy" in Congress and its Karnataka unit is "functioning like an independent entity as central leadership has no say in the state unit," Joshi, a former chief of the state BJP unit, told PTI.

 

The crisis, which had been brewing ever since the BJP swept the parliamentary polls in the state, deepened as 13 Congress and JD(S) MLAs submitting their resignation to the speaker.

The Congress and the JD(S) managed to win just one seat each in the state having 28 Lok Sabha constituencies. The BJP bagged 25 seats and an Independent supported by it won from Mandya.

The wobbly coalition in power for 13 months has a strength of 118 in the 224-member assembly and faces the risk of losing majority if the resignations are accepted.

Stating that the resignation of MLAs is a "game plan" of Siddaramaiah, Joshi said, "The current political crisis is actually an outcome of power struggle between Siddaramaiah and Kumaraswamy."

On one side Siddaramaiah wants to destabilise the government and on the other, Congress leader DK Shivakumar is working to save it, the BJP lawmaker from Dharwad in Karnataka said.

Assembly Speaker Ramesh Kumar, who was not in his office when 12 of the rebel legislators of the coalition went there to put in their papers on Saturday, has said, "Whether the government will fall or survive" would be decided "in the assembly".

The assembly session will begin on July 12.

The coalition partners, JD(S) and Congress, have been plagued by dissensions over allocation of ministerial berths and distribution of Lok Sabha seats.