NATAKA NEVER STOPS IN KARNATAKA

It’s a godsend that there is Nataka already spelt out in Karnataka. For sheer poll drama there has never been anything like this WhatsApp- twitter election of 2018. As millions of tweets poured in, it became clear that the Governor of Karnataka had chosen the more difficult course. Save for a clear cut case like Punjab, which BJP Governor post 214 has called anyone to form the government except BJP or a BJP- led coalition?

The fuming tweets were more than those with a Bhakt twist in supporting the other option. An Internet joke said it best - ‘ Why is horse trading allowed? So that a stable government is formed’. The irony is more in this case as the search goes on for stability in the numbers game. Of course, the ambitious JD( S), with a track record of reneging on power sharing agreements with the Congress and the BJP, may have been only likely to come down from its own internal contradictions of being the third horse in the winner’s circle.

The RSS may have been right in its view that the combine should have been given the first chance to self destruct. The top court rightly decided to bring forward the floor test to counter some of the Governor’s ‘ discretion’. Indian political history has been pockmarked with biased choices, beginning with the most liberal PM, Jawaharlal Nehru bringing down EMS Namboodripad regime in Kerala in 1959 just because he may have believed it is better “to be dead than red”. The nataka has not stopped since then.