Siddaramaiah a failed leader, has no right to seek my dismissal: BS Yediyurappa
Bengaluru: Reacting sharply to the Congress party's demand for dismissal of his government, Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Monday claimed it was trying to mislead the Supreme Court by submitting to it the audio clip in which he is allegedly heard confessing to the BJP engineering the resignations of the disqualified MLAs to bring down the Kumaraswamy government in July.
Speaking to reporters here, Mr Yediyurappa claimed that former chief minister Siddaramaiah had fabricated the audio. “It was Mr Siddaramaiah, who plotted to dislodge the Kumaraswamy government by engineering the resignations of the 17 rebel MLAs. And afterwards he and former Speaker Ramesh Kumar, disqualified these MLAs to save their skin,” he alleged and declared, “The leader of the Opposition is making baseless and malicious allegations against me. I have nothing to do with the disqualified MLAs and their decision to resign. If Siddaramaiah has the guts, let him face the byelections. It is left to the (former) MLAs to contest or not. I have nothing to do with their decision.”
Making a more personal attack against Mr Siddaramaiah , he said he was a “failed leader”. “This has been proved in the Lok Sabha elections in which the Congress won only one seat from Karnataka. Although, he is a failed leader, the Congress high command has appointed him Opposition leader. He has no moral right to demand the resignation of Union home minister Amit Shah,” Mr Yediyurappa asserted.
BJP leaders have been left red faced by the video clip in which the Chief Minister is allegedly heard pulling up his partymen for not backing the disqualified MLAs for the coming bypolls, although they had put their future in jeopardy by resigning in July to help the saffron party come to power in the state. He is also allegedly heard saying that the former MLAs were taken to Mumbai on Mr Amit Shah’s orders. The Congress lost no time in pouncing on the tape and met the Governor on Saturday to demand dismissal of the Yediyurappa government based on its contents.
