Asserting that the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in Karnataka fell apart due to its own reasons, BJP working president J P Nadda on Friday said that his party played no role in engineering the defections to bring down the Kumaraswamy-led government.
“The Congress-JD(S) coalition government fell under their weight due to internal reasons,” Nadda told reporters, at his maiden press conference, on a day when B S Yediyurappa took oath as the chief minister of Karnataka.
To a query on whether the BJP would be able to bring stability in Karnataka, he said, “BJP is synonymous with stability. Wherever we go, we bring stability.”
When asked about reports that some rebel Congress-JD(S) MLAs may be accommodated by the BJP government in Karnataka as ministers, Nadda said it is for these MLAs to decide their future course of action.
To a question on whether the BJP has done away with the age rule, that bars the leaders above 75 years from holding government position, in the case of Yediyurappa, who is now 76 years old, Nadda played it with a straight bat, saying, Yediyurappa was already leader of BJP legislature party, when he took oath as Chief Minister.
“He was elected as the leader of the legislature party. Accordingly, he took the oath. Now, what happens after that is a continuous process. The party takes care of these things from time to time. But he is taking oath as leader of the legislature party,” Nadda said.
Nadda’s beating about the bush on the issue was a clear indication of the clout that the Karnataka leader enjoys in the state. Yediyurappa is a powerful Lingayat leader in the state, clearly the tallest among the lot in the saffron party in the state, who had brought BJP to power, the first in any Southern state way back in 2008. While the central leadership of the BJP is keen for the emergence of new leadership in the state, it can ignore Yediyurappa at its own peril.
Replying to a query on two BJP leaders backing the Kamal Nath-government, the BJP working president said, “We have taken note of this development of Madhya Pradesh. All these things are in our knowledge.