Editorial in The Hindu on the crisis in the BJP in Karnataka:
“An inglorious capitulation by the central leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party to political blackmail by a mining lobby spearheaded by the Reddy brothers has paved the way for a resolution of the Karnataka crisis – for now…
“Having used the financial muscle of the brothers to win over independents and engineer defections from other parties last year, and to fight the Lok Sabha election this year, the BJP was in no position to take the moral high ground…
“But given a compromised central leadership, there was no question of the ‘party with a difference’ taking anything but the moral low ground.”
Read the full editorial: Dishonourable to the core
Why don’t the guys dissolve this party with the difference and send all its leaders home?
The editorial sums it up clearly. Hardly anybody can disagree with it. I don’t think BJP will ever come to power again if the present situation continues.
For once I have to agree with the chindu.
BJP has proved again that is a a ‘party with differences’
No two leaders seem to think alike now!
With such spineless central leadership, is it any wonder it is in dire straits everywhere?
I think Yediyurappa would’ve done well to convince central leadership to kick the Gani Dhani’s out and face election if it came to it. Karnataka people would’ve backed him for standing up to those thugs, just as they stood by him for standing up to Gowda louts.
Now, by saying he is sacrificing a lot for selfish reason, he is making himself a laughing stock, along with his party. And how long can he and BJP pull on with louts like Reddys? It is better to jettison them and learn to live with the core party base.
Hindu is spot on in this editorial.
The countdown to the death of the BJP govt has begun God save karnataka from the Reddy vandals.
As the article says, BJP won because of the Reddy brothers financial power. If they are kicked out etc. – they will lose most of their election deposit next time.
So what happened was best for them to cling onto power for now – which is the aim of all political parties.
People of Karnataka dont care about core philosophy etc. of BJP or RSS – which isnt much besides carrying on the inefficient, bumbling ways of the previous governments, besides a few low cost tamashas like belting women, attacking some churches etc. Next election will be decided based on money and strategy as always – for now BJP has shown themselves quite adept in holding onto power.
Is it a plot hatched by Anant Kumar and Sushma Swaraj? They are just using Reddy brothers to remote control Karnataka?
Anonymous Guy:
BJP won a dozen seats perhaps because of Reddy Brothers. But, to attribute the entire state win to Bellary Brothers is entirely wrong. BJP has stronghold in Dakshina-Uttara Kannada Districts, can do well in Northen districts without the reddys (Have proved that before reddys had the mining money too).
It may be true they may not be able to get past 113 without the dozen seats Reddy’s can provide, but then those dozen seats can be made up with ‘other’ means.
In fact, there is a good possibility of people supporting the BJP even in Bellary, should BJP expel the reddys, as ordinary people won’t stand the shenanigans of a few monied folks for long.
Its quite a sad reflection on the electorate of a state, that two moneybags appear to direct the election & the governance of an entire state administration.
It would be naive to pretend that this situation has happened for the first time. This situation has happened with several governments both Central and at the state level where the majority of the ruling party was slender and depended on certain influential indivduals. However, in the past all deals and yielding happened behing closed doors with a less intrusive media.
Now with more power hungry and news hungry politicians and a media prone to sensationalize issues, every piece of dirty laundry was aired in the open and none of the parties involved could pretend to take the high ground.
Harkol,
In case BJP had any other means of getting there without Reddys, there was no need of dragging the matter till these days, the moment the crisis appeared, yeddy would have expelled Reddys and it would have been, everybody in BJP lived happily ever after. … but now everybody knows what happened! BJP without Reddys is almost 0, as it is in the rest of the country! Jai ho!
Yeddyurappa started out visiting all the swamis and all the temples before the elections and the most powerful Reddys were pleased and blessed him Hence he became the CM. Now he has angered Reddys by his sins and all his visits to the temples will not be of any avail for they are unable to take back the curse once uttered and can not be taken back. But since he has so tearfully pleaded with them they have relented on one condition that he may continue as CM till December and then step down for even Reddys are helpless in the matter of such laws for it must run its course.
Bapu,
Very keen observations.