Oppn outBJPs Yeddyurappa
CM quits before the floor test; HD Kumaraswamy’s swearingin on Wednesday
BENGALURU: Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa resigned on Saturday without facing a potentially cliffhanger trust vote on the floor of the Karnataka assembly in the biggest political setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in four years and a rare success for the Congress.
The stage is now set for a Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress government headed by HD Kumaraswamy to be sworn in. Kumaraswamy met the governor on Saturday evening and will take the oath of office on Wednesday in a ceremony expected to be attended by United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi and leaders of several national parties including Trinamool Congress’s Mamata Banerjee, the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Mayawati, the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Tejashwi Yadav and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi’s K Chandrashekar Rao.
“I’m resigning as chief minister. I’m grateful to the speaker for giving me this opportunity,” Yeddyurappa said in a speech in the assembly, effectively conceding that the 55-hour-old, one-man government he formed would face certain defeat if the motion of confidence was put to vote.
The BJP won 104 seats in the May 12 assembly elections and the rival Congress-JD(S) combine, an alliance formed after the polls, got 115 seats in a house with an effective strength of 222. JD (S) ally Bahujan Samaj Party, a local party and an independent shared the remaining three seats.
Yeddyurappa’s hopes of winning the trust vote, set for 4pm, depended on cross-voting by members of the legislative assembly. His resignation before the motion of confidence was put to vote effectively meant the BJP’s efforts to woo rival party legislators had failed.
“I hope the BJP and RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) learn their lesson that not all institutions of this country can be subverted,” Congress president Rahul Gandhi said soon after Yeddyurappa’s resignation.
“My message to the PM (Narendra) Modi is that the Prime Minister is not bigger than the people of India, than the Supreme Court or the members of Parliament.”
It’s the first time since it came to power in May 2014 that the BJP has been outmanoeuvred at its own game by the Congress, which moved with alacrity to stitch up an alliance with the JD(S) and offered the chief minister’s post to Kumaraswamy.
NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single-largest party in the assembly elections in Karnataka this week, and staked claim to form the government. There was an alternative in place. The Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) had come together in a quick post-poll arrangement and claimed they had the majority in the House. The governor Vajubhai Vala still decided to invite the BJP’s legislative leader, BS Yeddyuruppa, triggering a political-legal storm that resulted in Yeddyurappa taking oath on Thursday, only to resign on Saturday afternoon. There are clear differences, but 22 years ago on the national stage, the BJP had emerged as the single-largest party and Atal Bihari Vajpayee was invited to form what is famously known as the 13-day government.
CONTEXT
The Lok Sabha elections were held five years after prime minister PV Narasimha Rao ushered in economic reforms, four years after the demolition of Babri Masjid, and months after the so-called Hawala scandal (where the Rao government implicated leaders from across parties, who later got acquitted).
The BJP declared Atal Bihari Vajpayee as its prime ministerial face. Riding on the promise of change, being a “party with a difference”, aggressive nationalism, and its Hindutva agenda, at a time when the Congress was in disarray, the BJP emerged as the single-largest force.
It won 161 seats, compared to 140 by the Congress. But the regional parties and the Left held the key.
SIGNIFICANCE
The 13-day Vajpayee experiment was significant for several reasons. One, for the first time, India had a prime minister who came from a staunchly Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh background, and had never been a part of Congress’s mainstream politics. The government did not last but this generated sympathy — at least in urban India, among the middle classes — for the party they felt was being unfairly kept out of power. Two, while elevating the BJP to the top, the brief duration also highlighted to the party the need to become more accommodating of allies, moderate its agenda, and become a big-tent formation. They used this lesson in 1998, when their government lasted 13 months with a wider set of allies, and in 1999, when the Vajpayee government was to go on to serve its entire five-year term. Three, it opened up the question of the President’s role in choosing a stable government. While Sharma stuck to convention and invited the single-largest party, two years later his successor KR Narayanan decided that he would only invite a leader when he was convinced that he had majority and thus asked for signatures of all supporting MPs.
And finally, for the antiBJP parties, the 1996 lesson was that if they came together, they could keep the BJP out.