The reverberations of the political turmoil in Karnataka were strongly felt in Lok Sabha on Monday with Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party sparing in Parliament even as the HD Kumaraswamy-led state government faces an existential crisis. While Congress accused BJP of engineering the crisis, defence minister Rajnath Singh hit back hard.
The Congress-Janata Dal Secular government in Karnataka is staring at a possible collapse after a number of MLAs from both parties tendered their resignations in the past several days. Independent MLA Nagesh also submitted his resignation on Monday, withdrawing support to the state government and stating that he would be willing to support a BJP government in Karnataka if the Governor Vajubhai Vala called for it. All of these prompted Congress to level allegations of horse trading against BJP. Adhir Ranjan led the attack against BJP, calling it a 'poacher party.'
The charge was met with a scathing counterattack from Rajnath. "Our party has nothing to do with what is happening in Karnataka. Our party has never indulged in horse trading," he said. "We're committed to maintaining the dignity of parliamentary democracy. The trend of submitting resignations was started by Rahul Gandhi in Congress,it wasn't started by us. He himself asked people to submit resignations, even senior leaders are submitting their resignations."
Meanwhile, 21 Congress MLAs submitted their resignations 'voluntarily' in what is being seen as a compromise solution to ensure that the state government does not collapse. One of the major concern of most of the dissenting MLAs has been that they were ignored for ministerial posts. Offering them ministerial berths could yet salvage the state government although the BJP maintains that the Congress-JDS combine has lost all rights to remain in power.
