Where the govt seems to crumble in slow motion

Karnataka is on auto-pilot, but charging along on a curious zigzag path. There is a chief minister, but he does not have a cabinet of ministers. The ministers have resigned, ostensibly to clear the way for rebel Congress and JD(S) MLAs to be accommodated in the coalition government their parties have been running with a wafer-thin majority, but which has been teetering on the edge ever since the Lok Sabha results, seeming to crumble almost in slow motion day by day. 

A desperate rescue is on now but the script seems to have got lost somewhere. The rebels who have resigned, and are holed up in a hotel in Mumbai, are refusing to come back home or withdraw their resignations. Two independents, made ministers for the second time, twice disgruntled, have again flown the cuckoo’s nest. A doughty and cash-rich troubleshooter Congressman by name of D K Shivakumar, even as he sprinted towards the airport, could not arrest the rebel flight. He’s currently under ‘guesthouse’ arrest in Mumbai, for trying in rather dramatic fashion to get in touch with his party defectors. 

Meanwhile, the Speaker of Karnataka has deemed only five of the 18 MLA resignations fit for consideration. Even those five he wants to have a dialogue with to determine if their resignations were voluntary. The Vidhana Soudha is a battlefield, in both the territorial and political senses. The BJP is waiting in the wings, counting minutes to stake claim at the opportune moment.

The Supreme Court is also being roped in, to decipher and delineate the Speaker’s role. The Speaker, in the meantime, is pondering over the anti-defection law and the grey areas therein. The Governor, once bitten twice shy, is mum at the moment. Should MLAs or MPs switch parties at will, and get re-elected, without an electoral cooling-off period? Well, that’s what the discerning public in Karnataka is debating.