The JD(S)-Congress coalition government fell on Tuesday as HD Kumaraswamy lost the trust vote by seven votes. While 98 MLAs voted in favour of Kumaraswamy, 105 MLAs voted against him and the 15 rebel MLAs abstained from the floor test. However, also missing from the Vidhana Soudha was the lone BSP MLA in the Assembly, N Mahesh.
The MLA abstained from voting in the floor test despite orders from BSP Chief Mayawati to support HD Kumaraswamy. Mayawati had put out a tweet on July 21 stating she had directed her party MLA to support Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy in Tuesday’s trust vote. This tweet had come as a surprise as just a day before, Mahesh had stated that he would abstain from voting in Monday’s trust as directed by his party’s supremo.
The Kollegal MLA N Mahesh was formerly a minister in the Kumaraswamy cabinet but resigned in 2018 following disagreements between the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Congress concerning seat-sharing in the 2018 Madhya Pradesh elections. But the JD(S) and BSP were the only pre-poll alliance before the May 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections and Mahesh had maintained his support for the government. The Congress and JD(S) in May 2018 had formed a sudden coalition in May 2018 and snatched away BJP leader BS Yeddyurappa's dream of becoming CM again.
However, the crisis for the coalition government in Karnataka started on July 6, when 10 rebel MLAs submitted their resignations. Despite all ministers in Kumaraswamy’s cabinet resigning to make way for rebelling MLAs, the rebels could not be pacified. Attempts by Congress’ troubleshooter and former minister DK Shivakumar to reach out to the MLAs, who were camped in a Mumbai hotel, also failed, with the leader even being detained by the police. The end of the road, however, came when more MLAs tendered their resignations and the Supreme Court allowing the rebelling legislators to sit out of the Assembly proceedings.