Even as scenes of jubilation quickly turned sombre at the BJP headquarters in Bengaluru, the BJP top brass huddled together at their war room in Malleshwaram, Bengaluru to chart the course to clinch the CM seat for BS Yeddyurappa.
Leadersl like BS Yeddyurappa, Muralidhar Rao, Shoba Karandlaje and Rajeev Chandrashekhar who had earlier met with Governor Vaju Vala and requested time to form the Government, returned to the office and quickly got to work.
According to highly placed sources in the BJP, the BJP has given up the fight to poach JD(S) MLAs and has turned its attention instead to Lingayat MLAs from the Congress. It is believed that MP B Sriramulu has been given the task of wooing them to defect during the floor test.
Sources in the BJP had earlier confirmed how the party is trying to poach Lingayat MLAs in the opposition fold as a repeat of its 2008 Operation Kamala.
Prakash Javadekar joined the meeting telling media persons that an announcement was forthcoming. However, BS Yeddyurappa and former CM Sadananda Gowda left the meeting soon after. BS Yeddyurappa announced that he would be meeting the Governor tomorrow to stake claim to the government as the single largest party.
The party will hold a legislature party meeting on Wednesday at 10:30am, after which BS Yeddyurappa will meet the Governor.
The same was corroborated by former Deputy CM and six-time MLA R Ashoka hours later.
"We will have a legislature party meeting tomorrow. We will go to the Governor again. We have every right to form government as we are the single largest party," he told reporters.
As things stand, no political party can form a government on its own. The BJP is 10 short of the magic number at 103.
The JD(S) and the Congress which have announced a post-poll alliance however can easily reach the figure of 113 with each having 78 and 38 seats each.