Former Karnataka Chief Minister and lingayat strongman BS Yeddyurappa was emotional when he came to the State BJP office in Malleshwaram in Bangalore on Thursday to formally rejoin the BJP. Yeddyurappa and his supporters who were in the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP), were welcomed by State BJP chief Prahlad Joshi after his re-entry into the party after a gap of well over a year.
In the glaring absence of the BJP national leaders, Yeddyurappa and his associates were given primary membership of the party in a low-key function.
Speaking to media after the function, Yeddyurappa asked the party workers of the KJP and the BJP to unitedly work for making Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi the Prime Minister. He said, “let us forget the past....let us remove the mutual suspicion and work together as the children of a mother. Because of our certain wrong decisions the Congress, which had been pushed to the corner, had returned to power in Karnataka. We had committed an unpardonable crime (by enabling it). Now party should go to the lok Sabha polls telling the people “pardon our mistakes. We will not repeat them.”
Yeddyurappa asked party workers to aim at winning the 20 lS seats in Karnataka as against 18 the BJP had won in the previous election. He came down on the ruling Congress Government and said the ruling party was facing bankruptcy of leadership and country was in favour of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister.
Ananth Kumar, who was perceived as a bête noire of Yeddyurappa and considered a stumbling block for his re-entry said, “We will never separate. We will be together. We will fight together.”