The Congress-JD(S) coalition in Karnataka on Tuesday could not delay the inevitable -- the vote of confidence to prove majority. Congress Legislature Party Chief and former chief Siddaramaiah, who was concluding his speech, took on an accusatory tone, stating that the 16 rebel legislators, who are responsible for the fall of the Kumaraswamy government, would never be accepted into the party's fold.
"I have seen so many leaders defect from Congress to BJP and not many of them have lasted long in that party. You see its an ideological difference. Only those who have the RSS background can stay in that party. These leaders have secular beliefs and hence they returned to us eventually," Siddaramaiah said.
Speaker Ramesh Kumar interrupted Siddaramaiah and asked whether the rebels would be accepted into the party if they ever wanted to return. A visibly miffed Siddaramaiah said, "Never. We will never take them back. Those who have fallen victims to Operation Kamala will never be taken back, even if there are floods, or an apocalypse or even if the sky is falling down," Siddaramaiah said.
The former Chief Minister also warned the 16 rebels that the BJP was preparing a funeral for their political careers and that they "dug their own graves" by resigning. Siddaramaiah accused the rebel MLAs of falling prey to the BJP's false promises of ministerial berths and monetary benefits.
"Twelve of them were promised minister berths and eight of them have taken money from BJP like our Krishna Byre Gowda had earlier said. How will you become Ministers? Will the BJP nurture them in the party? How many ministries do they have to give away? This is just a trap. We held great respect for them but the betrayal hurts," Chief Minister Siddaramaiah added.
Siddaramaiah also said that the people's mandate was for the coalition and not the BJP saying that the combined vote share of Congress and JD(S) amounted to 54.44%, while the BJP did not gain a majority in terms of the vote share and neither did they gain 113 seats to form a government.
"It is clearly evident that BJP leaders are behind this disgusting political game plan. People are not fools to not understand this and they will teach BJP leaders a great lesson in the coming elections. How is it right to destabilize stable govt for their selfish reasons?" Siddaramaiah said in a tweet.
The politics in Karnataka, which has been unravelling since July 6, has seen all ministers in Kumaraswamy’s cabinet resign to make way for the rebel MLAs, but to no avail. 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 allowed the rebelling legislators to sit out of the Assembly proceedings.
The crisis for the coalition began on July 6 when 12 Congress and 3 JD(S) MLAs submitted their resignations to the Speaker’s office. Just days before that Congress MLA Anand Singh had also tendered his resignation. The disgruntled MLAs accused Kumaraswamy of inefficiency and not taking into confidence the requests put forth by his fellow legislators.