BJP threw in the towel on Friday evening

The decision that Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa must quit in a flurry of hurt sentiments on the floor of the Assembly was taken by the BJP leadership on Friday evening, after all permutations and combinations to cobble together a majority failed and the Supreme Court reduced the time given for the floor test from 15 days to one.

Top sources told The Hindu that while the BJP had been exploring possibilities of government formation, the nature of the mandate had made it impossible.

Congress gambit

“From the get-go, the fact that the Congress could offer the chief ministerial position to H.D. Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal(S) sealed our fate. With 104 seats with us, we could not offer him that. There were only two Independents, both Congress rebels, who went back to the Congress. Other than appealing to a few Lingayat legislators in the Congress, there was nothing much we could do,” said a senior source involved in the issue.

The Supreme Court’s immediate deadline for the floor test removed any doubt that the BJP would be able to cobble together the numbers.

“The decision was taken at a meeting that Mr. Yeddyurappa would resign because the party’s image was getting dented as well,” said the source.

On Saturday morning, though Mr. Yeddyurappa told television channels that he was to take a few farmer-friendly decisions the following day, around 10 a.m., sources said he was finally told that he would have to quit. The timing of the resignation, whether to go through the floor test or quit after a speech upon introducing the confidence motion was left to him. This was also conveyed at a meeting of BJP legislators held in a hotel in Bengaluru.

Party image dented

“When the situation seemed impossible, we had to ensure that our voters knew that we tried to respect their mandate, and we stood by Mr. Yeddyurappa, but that the cost of keeping a government in place was too high in terms of image,” the source said.

Around noon, another round of talks was held between the BJP’s central leadership and Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, who was in charge of the polls in the State. The sequence of events was decided. Mr. Yeddyurappa’s speech about his plans for the State and his concern for farmers was then drafted.

In all this, the “extraction” of Congress MLAs Anand Singh and Pratap Gouda Patil from a city hotel after Director-General of Police Neelamani Raju intervened, added to the point that the BJP did not have numbers on its side to win the confidence vote.

“The party will now begin its campaign for the 2019 elections and watch the new government in the State carefully as it’s a coalition beset by internal contradictions. We still have our 104 MLAs,” said a senior office bearer of the party.