Siddaramaiah raises doubts over Yediyurappa govt’s “longevity”

PTI, Mar 20, 2020, 9:58 AM IST

Bengaluru: Leader of the Opposition in Karnataka Assembly Siddaramaiah on Thursday sought to taunt Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa by raising questions about his government’s longevity and said there was no guarantee about the ruling BJP continuing in power for remaining three years.

The former Chief Minister cited “political developments” in the BJP for his doubts.

While speaking about an increase in loans availed by the government and consequences that may arise in the future, Siddaramaiah said “assuming for argument sake that you (BJP) will continue (in power) for three years…”

Immediately responding to this, Yediyurappa said “we will be here (continue in power)..”

Siddaramaiah then said “if you are continuing… happy Mr Yediyurappa, what trouble will I have, but we don’t have guarantee that you will continue or not, because lot of things are happening within your party, we will not get involved into those things or do anything.”

Participating in the discussion on the budget, he said “there are lot of political developments that are happening.”

As someone from BJP said, there were political developments within the Congress also, Siddaramaiah said: “that means similar developments are happening among you (BJP) right? see it is admitted by themselves (BJP MLAs) now.
what happened here (Congress), is happening there also.”

Several times in the past too Siddaramaiah has raised questions about the longevity of Yediyuraapa-led government that came to power after the collapse of the Congress-JD(S) coalition government headed by H D Kumaraswamy last year, due to “internal disgruntlement.”

According to BJP sources, the win of 11 disqualified Congress-JD(S) legislators on BJP ticket and ten of them being inducted as ministers has given much need stability to the government.

But “disgruntlement” among some party seniors and loyals who failed to get Cabinet berth and their displeasure over Yediyurappa’s style of functioning, has posed fresh challenge to the government, sources said.