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Sunday, Nov 08, 2009
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Reddy brothers keep leadership guessing

Neena Vyas

BJP expects crisis will end today

NEW DELHI: 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 here and agree to hold a press conference to say that all has ended well? But that did not happen.

“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 almost all demands of the Reddys barring his own resignation; but “clinching” of the deal remains.

Yeddyurappa’s statement

In the 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 in the afternoon and was hoping to organise the “clincher” joint press conference with the Chief Minister by evening. But that was not to be.

On his return from Vaishno Devi , Mr. Yeddyurappa rushed to a meeting of party leaders at the residence of M. Venkaiah Naidu, and later called on president Rajnath Singh. Confabulations and meetings continued throughout the day.

The party now expects that the Reddys will be here on Sunday to publicly say “Yes” to the deal.

What has annoyed and upset the BJP leadership is that they continue to make statements from Bangalore that they remain firm on replacement of the Chief Minister. While an influential section of the central leadership has been saying there will be no leadership change in Karnataka, another section thinks 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 leader. A third section is of the view that no negotiations should have been held 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 Ministry, roll back decisions taken on some transfers of officials, and kill the proposal for an additional tax of Rs. 1,000 per truckload of iron ore.

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