BJP will stake claim if Cong-JDS govt falls: Sadananda Gowda

Bengaluru: The BJP would stake claim to power in Karnataka if the Congress-JDS coalition government falls, Union minister D V Sadananda Gowda said here on Tuesday, hours after two Independent legislators in the state withdrew support from the seven-month-old Kumaraswamy dispensation.

Gowda said the Kumaraswamy government would collapse on its own due to squabbling and that the Congress-JDS ‘friendship” was on the “brink of divorce”.

“The friendship is at the brink of divorce. It is time for break-up. A party with 37 seats has formed the government. It will collapse on its own due to squabbling. If the government collapses, we will certainly form the government,” he told reporters here.

Gowda was replying to a query on whether there was any likelihood of the BJP staking claim to power in the event of the collapse of the coalition government.

The Congress and JDS had formed the government after the May 2018 assembly polls threw up a fractured verdict with the BJP emerging as the single largest party with 104 seats in the 224-member Assembly.

The Congress had secured 79 seats and the JDS 37.

BJP Lok Sabha member Prathap Simha said it was everybody’ wish to see Yeddyurappa as the next chief minister and the party would not sit quiet after winning 104 seats.

“We do have the wish to see Yeddyurappa as the next chief minister. How can we sit quietly after winning 104 seats? When these people (Congress and JD-S) formed the government we were quite depressed because public opinion was in favour of the BJP. Indeed, numbers matter in a democracy,” said Simha.

He, however, sought to know why the coalition government was sitting on shaky ground.

“Why is the coalition government so shaken? Are the ruling party MLAs so weak? Is it so that the MLAs are so depressed with this government? Are no development works happening? Had it happened then, the MLAs would have focused on their constituency,” Simha said.