Bengaluru: After losing Maharashtra to the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress combine despite being the largest party in the state assembly, the BJP leadership is straining every sinew to make sure the B.S. Yediyurappa government in Karnataka secures a comfortable majority after the December 5 byelections.
While the main focus will be on poll-bound Jharkhand, Karnataka too is a big challenge for the party top brass which knows it cannot afford to have another of its governments collapsing. Party insiders are however confident and assert that the BJP will win not less than 10 seats of the 15 facing bypolls.
At present, the BJP has 105 seats in the 224-member assembly. With one Independent MLA (H. Nagesh) joining the state cabinet, the party's strength in the lower House in effect, stands at 106 and it needs just seven more seats to get a clear majority.
What has made the BJP up its efforts to secure as many seats possible in the bypolls is the embarrassing fact that it may have to depend on the JD (S) for survival for the next three-and-half-years, if it fails to win enough seats.
Therefore party central leaders closely following the Karnataka bypolls, are likely to devote more attention to helping Mr Yediyurappa strategise and win as many seats as possible so that the BJP does not have to depend on the JD(S) after pulling down a JD(S) led government barely six months ago, sources said.
