The Congress has not yet decided on releasing its Karnataka legislators from the holiday resort they were rushed to on Friday evening as the BJP has been sending confusing signals about its intentions.
Congress sources said they too had considered releasing their MLAs from Eagleton Resort in Bidadi, some 40km from the city, but decided to wait another day or two.
“Everyone has to realise that our MLAs are holed up in a resort because the BJP kept pestering them with offers of money and power,” Karnataka minister Zameer Ahmed Khan said on Saturday.
Earlier in the day Karnataka BJP chief B.S. Yeddyurappa had called back all party MLAs holed up in a Gurgaon hotel in a sign of easing the mission to topple the state government.
The Congress, which rules the state with ally Janata Dal Secular, saw Yeddyurappa’s move to call back his MLAs from the Haryana hotel as a retreat, with legislature party chairman P.C. Siddaramaiah welcoming it.
But Yeddyurappa went into a huddle with party colleagues hours later, including senior leader and state rival K.S. Eshwarappa, leading to speculation that the BJP had still not stopped thinking of grabbing power in the state.
D.K. Suresh, Congress Lok Sabha member from Bangalore Rural where the holiday resort is located, has been tasked with keeping the flock intact. But he told reporters there were no restrictions on the legislators.
“Whoever wants to go out can do so. The party is utilising their time here (at the resort) to hold meetings on development works in their constituencies since the budget session is just a couple of weeks away,” said Suresh, whose elder brother and state minister D.K. Shivakumar arranged the accommodation.
Shivakumar was among the few legislators who left the resort to attend meetings at their offices in the Vidhana Soudha in the first half of the day.
Suresh had a loyalty lesson for his party colleagues who were said to have been in touch with the BJP. “All of us won because of the party. We shuttle between the houses of leaders every day for tickets and then listen to whatever the party says. After winning we cannot say everything is because of us and our own agenda,” he said.
Four party MLAs had skipped Friday’s Congress legislature party meeting. While two of them had informed party leaders about their inability to attend the meeting, there was no sign of the other two.
State BJP spokesperson S. Prakash said his party had not approached anyone from the ruling camp to switch sides.
“We are not dislodging this government. We even called back our MLAs from Haryana where they were taken for our internal meetings, while the Congress has virtually locked up their members,” he said.
A senior Congress functionary claimed the BJP had a larger game plan. “They basically want to portray a negative image of our coalition government ahead of the Lok Sabha elections as Karnataka is the only southern state where they can still manage a few seats,” C.M. Dhananjaya, chairman of the state Congress’s legal cell, told this newspaper.
The BJP had won 17 of the state’s 28 parliamentary seats in 2014 and has 104 MLAs in the 224-member Assembly.
“They need to understand that this (Congress-JDS) government will not fall. But even if we need numbers to survive, we won’t stoop to the level of the BJP,” Dhananjaya said.
