Bengaluru: With the crisis in Karnataka set to mark its eighth day, the Congress wentinto overdrive on Saturday, with Congress Legislature Party leader Siddaramaiah dispatching his top trouble-shooters D.K. Shivakumar and state Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar who were later joined by Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy as they stepped up efforts to pacify Hoskote MLA,
M.T.B. Nagaraj. Concurrently, the Congress bigwigs pulled out their bigguns, sending Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, who arrived inBengaluru late on Saturday alongside senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad. MrNagaraj, in a huge boost to the Congress’ hopes, not only hinted that hemight reconsider his resignation, also said he would try and persuade theother rebels to withdraw their objections too.
However, the BJP upped the ante, demanding that Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy seek a trust vote on Monday, a day prior to the Supreme Courthearing on a similar petition of 10 other rebel MLAs of Congress-JD(S) whohave resigned. BJP sources revealed they are working on bringing in five tosix more dissidents to topple the government as part of Mr B. S. Yeddyurappa’sstrategy to ensure that a total of 16 Congress and JD(S) MLAs abstain duringthe trust vote and the two independent MLAs vote against it, which gives it a total of 18 votes against the Kumaraswamy government.
Another three MLAs are ready to resign in the middle of session, and maybetwo more, a die-hard supporter of Mr Yeddyurappa told this newspaper. “Wewill defeat the trust vote by more than 6 -7 votes,” he said confidently. Posing a fresh challenge to the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalitiongovernment, five Congress MLAs — including Mr. Nagaraj – moved the SupremeCourt on the case over their resignations from the Assembly membership.
