As the Lok Sabha election debacle pushed the ruling coalition in Karnataka into a greater turmoil, the Congress Wednesday went into an overdrive to avert a potential existential crisis to the one-year-old H D Kumaraswamy ministry.
Rushed here by the party high command on a damage control mission, Congress general secretary K C Venugopal met Kumaraswamy, senior party leaders and ministers and attended a legislature party meeting to save the coalition from an intensified BJP onslaught.
CLP leader and Congress-JDS coordination committee chief Siddaramaiah said no one would leave the Congress and there was no disgruntlement either.
“All of us are together.This government is strong and will survive. If BJP tries to destabilise the government, they will be biggest fools,” he told reporters after the CLP meeting, attended by 72 Congress MLAs, with two rebels Ramesh Jarkiholi and R Roshan Baig giving it a miss.
Two other missing lawmakers-- Ramalinga Reddy and Byrati Basavaraj-- had obtained permission not to attend the meet, he said.
Ramesh Jarkiholi has been hobnobbing with the BJP leaders indicating that he may jump the ship, while Baig has been ridiculing the party leadership and praising prime minister Narendra Modi, leaving the Congress red-faced.
KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao said senior leaders and ministers would meet Thursday to discuss cabinet expansion, a solution that has been proposed to quell snowballing dissent.
A joint legislature party meeting of the Congress and JDS would be held soon, he added.
The state congress unit revoked the suspension of MLA Kampli Ganesh, who had faced the action after an alleged brawl with a party colleague at a resort in January, party sources said.
Coalition worries have multiplied after BJP's spectacular win with 25 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in its pocket, leaving a mere one seat each to Congress and JDS, which, despite a joint fight, were swept away by the Modi wave.
Buoyed by the landslide win in the LS polls, the BJP, which emerged as the single-largest party in the 224-member assembly in the May polls last year, is reportedly eyeing to capture power amid reports of a rift between Congress and JDS.
The BJP had won 104 seats and added one more to its tally in the bypolls held along with Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress had won the Kundgol bypoll.
In the 224 member assembly, the ruling combine has a strength of 115 (Cong-78, JDS-37) excluding the Speaker. BSP with one member and an independent are currently supporting the ruling alliance. KPJP has one member.
In the meetings earlier, plans for cabinet expansion or reshuffle were discussed by Venugopal with Kumaraswamy, Siddaramaiah, Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara and Rao, Congress sources said.