NEW DELHI: In an ironical twist, Union minister
Arun Jaitley's tweets from 2017 are now being quoted by the opposition Congress to fire a salvo and emphasize its point -- that the governor must invite the JD(S)-Congress combine to stake claim to form government.
Tuesday's results threw up a hung assembly with the BJP emerging the single largest party in the 224-member
Karnataka assembly with 104 seats, coming tantalising close to the halfway mark but stopping short of crossing it. Sensing an opportunity and learning from past mistakes in Manipur and Goa, the Congress wasted no time and offered its support to the JD(S) to keep the saffron party out of power, which the latter accepted.
To reiterate its point, Congress party leaders used Jaitley's words from a year ago as ammunition. Screenshots of his tweets were even tweeted by leaders such as CPM's
Sitaram Yechury and National Conference's Omar Abdullah.
The senior BJP leader had then argued "In a hung assembly, if majority of the elected MLAs form a coalition, the governor would be constitutionally right in inviting the leader of the majority coalition to form the government and prove their majority within a short period."
Jaitley's argument at that time intended to support BJP forming governments in Goa, Manipur and Meghalaya despite not being the largest party. but instead by getting the required numbers after stitching together post-poll alliances. Congress was the single-largest party in all three states but was not invited to form government.
Naturally, this time round, BJP had a different view. Yedyurappa, the party's chief ministerial candidate maintained that BJP as single largest party in Karnataka should be invited by the governor to form government, also accusing the Congress of underhanded maneuvering and "backdoor politics." But the Congress made it clear the saffron party had no moral right to preach on government formation since it had done the same in the past.
The ball is now in the governor's court.
File photo of Arun Jaitley