BJP leaders hustle to gain majority

Bengaluru: The BJP has come up with a well-thought and planned approach to lure MLAs onto their side in order to prove its majority on the floor of the House. It has been learnt that former Minister B. Sriramulu and the Reddy brothers are targeting MLAs belonging to the Nayak community, to which Sriramulu also belongs to. On the other side, the camp of Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa is known to be targeting Lingayat MLAs from north Karnataka.

Sriramulu and the Reddy brothers are probably repeating Operation Kamala of 2008- to influence and gain the support of MLAs from Opposition parties. This is also reinforced by the fact that Sriramulu had earlier made a statement that the “BJP will prove majority with numbers beyond anyone’s imagination”. BJP sources also credit his camp for the disappearance of two MLAs from the Congress camp – Anand Singh and Pratapgouda Patil.

Anand Singh is said to have gone out of the State on Wednesday to an undisclosed location. Congress-JD(S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy alleged that the BJP government at the Centre was misusing Central agencies to threaten the elected members in Karnataka and that Singh was an example of this. Pratapgouda Patil, who is originally from the BJP and belongs to the same caste as Sriramulu, has been unreachable since Thursday morning and sources say that he has left the State.

Simultaneously, CM Yeddyurappa’s camp has come up with a list of 15 Lingayat MLAs. They will be appealed to make their efforts in trying to not bring down a Lingayat Chief Minister. A team of former Lingayat Ministers were assigned the task of approaching Lingayat MLAs from their regions and try to gain their support.