“All’s well in the party.” Every senior BJP leader sought to ascertain so. But signs of a festering turmoil within the party were evident at the first ever co-ordination committee meeting of the ruling party held here on Wednesday.
The rebel group led by the Reddy brothers, in fact, succeeded in getting the party decide to keep away their arch-rival and chief minister BS Yeddyurappa’s confidant, Basavaraj Bommai, from the committee deliberations for some time, informally though.
The presence of national BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj, Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitley and others did little to sober the belligerent rebels who made sure that there was little co-ordination at the co-ordination committee meeting from the word go. The two rebel group representatives in the committee, Jagadish Shettar and Karunakara Reddy, made their intentions clear by arriving late and keeping chief minister BS Yeddyurappa, 12 other members and senior leaders waiting for 45 minutes.
Yeddyurappa and others were present at the venue, a hotel, at 10.30 am, the scheduled time for the meeting to begin. But Shettar and Karunakara Reddy preferred not to be present and were busy confabulating at another corner of the hotel. At this stage, senior party leader Ananth Kumar and minister R Ashok played mediators and rushed to the rebel leaders to check out whey they had not come.
Sources close to the Reddy brothers confirmed that the group vociferously questioned the inclusion of Bommai in the committee. “We are demanding the ouster of Bommai from the ministry; but the chief minister has included him in the committee. We will never accept him,” the rebel representatives are believed to have said.
At one stage, the rebel representatives virtually threatened to boycott the committee if Bommai remained its member. Ananth Kumar and Ashok finally brokered a truce, according to which Bommai would be kept out of the committee deliberations for some time. But Bommai’s formal sacking from the committee will have to wait for a short period. The rebels were told that removing Bommai from the panel would show the party in very poor light, the sources claimed. Later, a meeting of the BJP legislature party was held.
Refusing to take any questions, chief minister Yeddyurappa said, “I will change my attitude. From now onwards, I will take all my party MLAs into confidence. I will communicate with the MLAs and spend most of my time with them.”
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