Speculation is rife that the beleaguered former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa is distancing himself from BJP.
Speculation is rife that the beleaguered former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa is distancing himself from BJP.
Rumours don’t stop at just distancing - there is a growing feeling among his loyalists that Yeddyurappa is on course to quit BJP to form a new party under the banner of which he plans to contest the forthcoming assembly elections.
One indication of Yeddyurappa going his own way is his plan to set up his own office in BJP’s old office premises, just a kilometre away from the BJP office where it shifted to in April 2011, ahead of senior party leader LK Advani’s visit to Bangalore.
Yeddyurappa’s latest plan has led many to wonder why he needs a separate office when a BJP office already exists. Yeddyurappa’s new office is scheduled to be inaugurated today. Yeddyurappa loyalists said the inauguration of his own office is timed to coincide with the Friday visit of BJP’s Karnataka in-charge, Dharmendra Pradhan, and party general secretary, Arun Jaitley, to Bangalore to try and resolve the ongoing crisis.
Yeddyurappa is keeping his cards close although he has referred to his much-rumoured exit from BJP as “mere speculation”.
However, BP Harish, a close associate of Yeddyurappa, on Thursday said Yeddyurappa and former minister B Sriramulu will unite in the coming days. “Yeddyurappa has sacrificed a lot to bring BJP to power in Karnataka. Even Janardhan Reddy and Sriramulu had worked hard to strengthen the party. In the coming days Yeddyurappa and Sriramulu will unite and you will see changes in the state politics,” he said, but refrained from commenting on Yeddyurappa trying to form a new party.
Sriramulu, too, denied that he would join BSY or BJP. “BJP is ruining the state and there is no question of joining hands with either BJP or Yeddyurappa,” he said.
But Yeddyurappa said he had hired BJP’s old office to interact with supporters and the general public. “On June 1, I am vacating the Race Course Road residence where hundreds of people from across the state came to meet me. Once I move to my Dollars Colony residence, I won’t be able to accommodate all of them, so I have decided to hire our old BJP office in Malleswaram,” he said, adding “As I hold no post in the state BJP it may be wrong on my part to use the party office to interact with the people.”
However, sources in BJP said Yeddyurappa has been “very upset” with his party leaders both at national and state level who he felt had sidelined him.
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