'Confusion' in Karnataka BJP will end in 3 to 4 days: Yeddyurappa

Amid the BJP central leadership's crackdown to end infighting in its Karnataka unit, the party's state president B S Yeddyurappa today said the "confusion" in the organisation's state wing would end in three to four days.

"All this confusion will end. It won't repeat again. Our party national president Amit Shah has taken this task, that's the reason Muralidhar Rao (BJP national general secretary and Karnataka in-charge) was sent here...," he said.

Speaking to reporters at Siddapura in Uttara Kannada district, he said, "They (high command) will take appropriate decisions. They will put an end to all this confusion and all these things will come to an end in three to four days. I'm hundred per cent confident that it will not repeat again." Maintaining that the party would work together to fight the assembly polls, due early next year, Yeddyurappa said the BJP will contest all the 224 seats and expressed confidence that it would win more than 150 seats.

Cracking down on the feuding factions of the party's Karnataka unit, the BJP central leadership on Saturday night relieved two-office bearers each from Yeddyurappa and senior leader K S Eshwarappa camps of their charges.

It also barred party members from participating in the activities of Rayanna Brigade, an apolitical forum of Dalits and backward classes floated by Eshwarappa in an apparent show of strength, and also asked them not to talk about the party's internal affairs in public or before the media.

The action came after a series of meetings held by Rao with the party's state leaders here as the factional feud had intensified after April when Eshwarappa had held a convention to "save" the organisation in defiance of the warnings by Yeddyurappa's camp against it.

Rao is expected to submit a report on the developments in the party's state unit to Shah, based on which further steps are likely to be taken to put an end to factional feud.

"Muralidhar Rao had come, he was sent by Amit Shah. He has taken everyone's opinion and gone. I feel that they will put an end to all this," Yeddyurappa said in reply to a question.

Refusing to comment on the decision to relieve the party's four office bearers of their charges, he said, "Muralidhar Rao is the BJP national general secretary and state in-charge, he had come on the national president's instructions. No one can or should question the decisions taken, those who have committed mistakes should rectify." On late Saturday night, state vice-presidents Bhanuprakash and Nirmal Kumar Surana, Raitha Morcha vice- president M P Renukacharya and spokesperson G Madhusudhan were relieved of their responsibilities in the party with immediate effect.

While Bhanuprakash and Surana had shared the stage with Eshwarappa at the convention, Renukacharya and Madhusudhan, considered close to Yeddyurappa, had made public statements targeting national joint general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh, blaming him for scripting dissidence activities.

Eshwarappa, who had skipped a meeting with Rao yesterday, had said he was "deeply pained" by the action against Bhanuprakash and Surana, noting they have served the organisation for years.

Bhanuprakash today expressed his displeasure over the decision of reliving him of the party's responsibilities being made known to the media, even before, he said, he was informed.

The resentment has been brewing within the party over Yeddyurappa's alleged "unilateral" style of functioning after the appointment of party office-bearers and "ignoring" loyal workers and the old guard of the party after he took over as the party's state unit president in April 2016.