The South India Times
(Special Correspondent)
Bengaluru: Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who blew the election begul last week, in the poll-bound southern state, has made it clear that his party is all set to go alone to take on depleted Opposition.While the Congress is a divided house with two groups – former chief minister Siddaramaiah and party state unit chief D K Shivkumar – the Janata Party (Secular (JDS) looks equally nervous over its possible extinction from state politics as it looks for a possible alliance with the newly formed Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) headed by K Chandrasekhar Rao. Both parties are ironically facing rough weather. In the past, the BJP had an alliance with Deve Gowda’s Janata Party (Secular) (JDS). Twice, the JDS headed by Gowda’s son Kumara Swamy, has let down the BJP. As a result, the BJP which has emerged as the single largest party bagging 104 in the 224-strong assembly, yet could not form the government as the Congress, which got 78 seats, and the JDS with 37 joined hands to form the government. Though the Congress got 38.14 percent vote share and win just 80 seats, the BJP with 36.35 managed to grab a record 104. And the JDS with an 18.3 percent vote share gets 37 seats. The Congress, with 78 members, offered its support to the JD(S) to form the government. Both parties safeguarded their MLAs from possible horse-trading by lodging them in hotels in neighboring States. As a result, H.D. Kumaraswamy managed to take the oath on May 23 as the chief minister of the state.
But, fourteen months after it was formed, the Congress-JDS government collapsed after it lost a trust vote in the assembly 99-105. The collapse was brought about by the resignation of 15 legislators roughly after two weeks-long political turmoil. Kumaraswamy lost the trust vote in the state Assembly that had been put off by the ruling coalition tried to drag on. The political crisis was triggered by a string of resignations by lawmakers of the ruling Congress and Janata Dal-Secular, reducing the 15-month-old rainbow coalition between two erstwhile rivals, to a minority. Since, it took over the reins the BJP under its tallest leader BS Yeddyurappa. However, several factors were cited to relieve him from the responsibility after a year or so.
