The war of nerves between the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership and the two Reddy brothers of Bellary continued throughout Saturday till late evening when “word” finally came that one of them would “soon” head for the capital to “clinch” the compromise “deal” worked out for Karnataka on Friday.
Throughout the day, G. Janardhana Reddy and G. Karunakara Reddy, who have been demanding the replacement of B.S. Yeddyurappa as Chief Minister, kept the leadership guessing. Would they show up in the capital and agree to hold a press conference to say that all has ended well? But that did not happen. Now the party hopes that the weeklong drama will end on Sunday if the Reddys keep their “word” that they are headed for New Delhi.
“There is many a slip between the cup and the lip,” was how a senior leader summed up the situation in the morning. The “deal” is done; the Chief Minister has agreed to all demands of the Reddys barring his own resignation; but what remains is the “clinching” of the deal. The party has an agreement but, metaphorically speaking, the official stamp and signature that would seal the deal are missing.
Yeddyurappa’s statement
In fact, on Saturday morning, the Chief Minister announced to some journalists that the “crisis is over” and left for Vaishno Devi. The party expected the Reddys to reach the capital during the afternoon and was hoping to organise the “clincher” joint press conference with the Chief Minister by Saturday evening. That did not happen.
Instead, on his return from a visit to Vaishno Devi, Mr. Yeddyurappa rushed to attend a meeting of party leaders at the residence of M. Venkaiah Naidu and later met BJP president Rajnath Singh. Confabulations and meetings in the party continued throughout the day.
The party now expects to resolve the crisis by Sunday, by when it is hoping that the Reddys will be here to publicly say “Yes” to the deal.
What has annoyed and upset the BJP leadership is that the Reddys have continued to make statements from Bangalore that they remain firm on their demand that the Chief Minister must be replaced.
While an influential section of the party leadership has been saying there would be no change in the leadership in Karnataka, that is, Mr. Yeddyurappa would not be asked to put in his resignation papers, there is another section hoping that the Chief Minister would fall.
“That is what the Reddys were also hoping for — ouster of the Chief Minister — and, therefore, they were holding out,” said one party leader. There is a third section of the central party leadership, which is of the view that there should have been no negotiations with the Reddys even if that meant loss of the government.
Compromise formula
Under the compromise worked out on Friday, the Chief Minister was to reshuffle his Cabinet to drop Rural Development Minister Shobha Karandlaje; induct Speaker Jagadish Shettar into the Cabinet; roll back decisions taken on some transfers of officials; and kill the proposal for an additional tax of Rs. 1,000 per truck-load of iron ore.
