Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy on Tuesday played down the withdrawal of support to his government by two independent MLAs saying, “I know my strength”, reports ANI.
“If two MLAs withdraw their support, what will be the numbers? I’m totally relaxed. I know my strength. Whatever is going on in media in the past week, I am enjoying,” said Kumaraswamy who heads a Congress-JD(S) coalition government in the state.
The withdrawal of support does not pose any immediate threat to the government, but the exit of the two MLAs brings the coalition strength down to 118 — 80 MLAs of the Congress, 37 of the JD(S) and one from the Bahujan Samaj Party. The BJP, which emerged as the single largest party after the state assembly elections in May by winning 104 seats, is still 7 MLAs short of the majority mark of 113.
R Shankar, MLA from Ranebennur in Haveri district, who had been dropped from the state Cabinet last month and H Nagesh, MLA from Mulbagal in Kolar district, announced their decision at a press conference in Mumbai and have even written to the Governor in this regard.
The state has been abuzz with allegations of horse-trading that were triggered after three Karnataka Congress MLAs visited Mumbai on Monday, reportedly along with some BJP MLAs. This was followed by the Congress alleging that the BJP was trying to poach the ruling party’s MLAs to destabilise the JD(S)-Congress alliance government in the state.
{{/usCountry}}The state has been abuzz with allegations of horse-trading that were triggered after three Karnataka Congress MLAs visited Mumbai on Monday, reportedly along with some BJP MLAs. This was followed by the Congress alleging that the BJP was trying to poach the ruling party’s MLAs to destabilise the JD(S)-Congress alliance government in the state.
{{/usCountry}}The BJP has since shifted 99 of its 104 state legislators to a private resort in Gurugram, a party spokesman said.
“A total of 99 legislators are currently at a private resort, while the other five are in Delhi itself and in touch with us,” BJP Karnataka’s spokesman Vamanacharya told IANS.
“The reason that our MLAs had to be kept in a resort points to the ill-intentions of the coalition partners Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S),” he added.