Bangalore:
After a brief, uneasy calm, the Karnataka unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is back in the throes of a crisis again. Chief Minister DV Sadananda Gowda has written to BJP president Nitin Gadkari complaining against party strongman and his predecessor BS Yeddyurappa.
Mr Gowda, in his letter alleged, has blamed five ministers of his government for anti-party activities. State party president KS Eswarappa too has written to Mr Gadkari in this regard.
The BJP unit in the state has been in turmoil for some time now with the party split right through the middle. Mr Yeddyurappa, with his sizeable number of supporters, is seeking a comeback as chief minister of the state. He had relinquished the post in July last year after he was strongly indicted in an illegal mining report by the Karnataka Lokayukta. The Lingayat leader, then handpicked Mr Gowda as his successor, envisaging him as a stop-gap arrangement till he made a bid for return as the chief minister after being cleared of the charges of corruption. But his plans clearly didn't go as planned with Mr Gowda strongly resisting any move to dislodge him.
Armed with the support of 70 of the 100 MLAs in the state, Mr Yeddyurappa had also made a trip to New Delhi in March this year, hoping to be reinstated as the chief minister. But the party high command didn't oblige with reports of senior leaders like LK Advani wary of bringing back Mr Yeddyurappa to office as it would deflate their campaign against the Congress of tolerating corruption within its ranks.
But Mr Yeddyurappa, a leader from the Lingayat caste which is a powerful vote bank, will not wait indefinitely. He has already made it clear that with his 70 loyalists, he can split the party in Karnataka and bring down the government. In a critical by-election in March, the BJP lost the Lok Sabha seat from Udipi-Chikmagalur - the former constituency of Mr Gowda. The defeat was a victory in disguise for Mr Yeddyurappa who chose not to campaign there, allegedly because his party had reservations about the corruption cases against him, and whether that would affect voters.