At around 2 pm when it became clear that the BS Yeddyurappa Government will not be able to muster support to win the floor test, BJP president Amit shah advised the lingayat strongman to put in his papers to avoid any major embarrassment for the party. The BJP was obviously worried that since the entire nation was watching the Karnataka development and bribery tapes were exploding by the minutes, it was not better to go any further.
The BJP had apparently targeted 16 MlAs, particularly those belonging to the lingayat community, from the Congress-JD (S) camp but with the rival combine throwing a “tight security ring” around its MlAs and making them largely incommunicado, the BJP central leadership is understood to have started veering towards the possibility of calling off the ‘operation majority’ by Friday evening and asked the Chief Minister to make a speech of a martyr to the people of the State. This was particularly to target his influential lingayat community in view of the next general elections as also any eventualities that the political scenario may throw up when the Congress-JD (S) government starts functioning.
Yeddyurappa had earlier spoken to BJP president over phone in the afternoon amid speculation of his resignation. In the meantime, Congress MlAs Anand Singh and Pratap Gouda Patil, who had been incommunicado for a while and missed the oath-taking ceremony in the Assembly, had come back in the Assembly. Even as this happened, BJP had by then stepped back and called off its Rs surgical strike’.
That Yeddyurappa would quit had become more so clear as by 3.30 pm senior BJP leaders Prakash Javadekar and Murlidhar Rao decided to hold a press conference in Bengaluru at 6.30 pm to detail the party’s view point over the entire episode. Yeddyurappa put in his papers around 4.15 pm reading out points from his speech of 13 pages which is understood to have been prepared a day ahead.
According to sources, it was for a while that the central and BJP Karnataka leaders had realized that ‘operation lotus’ , this time, may not break the cordon laid by the Congress-JDS around its MlAs who were made to move from one place to another place (Karnataka to Andhra Pradesh) and not allowed to be breached by the alleged lucrative offers from the rivals. The MlAs under seize had travelled through the night from Bengaluru to Hyderabad on Thursday night, covering over 550 km in an eight-hour journey that started just after midnight.
The Congress and JD(S) also went on the offensive as it released a series of audio recordings made by their MlAs in which offers of money and ministerial berths were made to them, allegedly by Yeddyurappa himself, his son and G. Janardhan Reddy, the mining baron from Bellary who alongwith B Sriramulu were the main actors from the BJP’s side trying to rescue the BSY government. The BJP rejected these recordings as “fake” but realized that air is being vitiated as numbers were nowhere adding up in its favour.
On Shah’s advise, Yeddy’s exited but not before delivering an emotional appeal , going live, to the people of the State, particularly his own lingayat community. No wonder, he exerted that the BJP would win all the 28 lok Sabha seats in 2019. The message was that Congress and JDS ganged up to block him from holding the office despite the mandate of being the largest single party in the assembly. Yeddyurappa who exited like Atal Bihari Vajpayee did in 1996 at the Centre, Yeddy, may now go on a state tour to garner people’s support following his resignation act with 2019 lok Sabha poll in mind, sources said.