Smarting under poll loss shocker, BJP leaves Karnataka MLAs headless
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, July 26: The middle level crisis in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is arguably deepening. Even after three months of the Karnataka Assembly poll outcome, the BJP legislative party in the state remains headless.
Arguably one of its own kind and a first, the Karnataka Assembly is without a leader of the Opposition, because the BJP after poll outcome didn’t hold the meeting of the legislative party to elect the leader. By turning a deaf ear to the Karnataka leaders, the top brass of the BJP appears to be sending the message that there’s a cost of infighting that led to the defeat in the Assembly election.
“It’s rare and first of its kind that there is no leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly. The Budget session has also concluded. Yet, the BJP top brass didn’t find it important to allow someone to become the leader of the Opposition. There is a sense of anger as well as feeling of being insulted among the senior state leaders of the party,” said a senior BJP functionary from Bengaluru.
It may be noted that the BJP effected organisational changes in a few states, including Telangana. But the focus of the top brass of the BJP is clearly on the poll-bound states. In normal circumstances, the outgoing chief minister gets the position of the leader of Opposition, which in the case could have been Basavaraj Bommai.
But the BJP by not allowing Bommai to take the position of the leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly has stoked the ambitions of several MLAs in the party ranks who are now aspiring to take the responsibility.
It may be recalled that the BJP had given the responsibility of the leader of the legislative party to Babulal Marandi in the Jharkhand Assembly. But that was possible because of the poll defeat of the outgoing chief minister Raghubar Das from his Assembly seat. In contrast, Bommai has retained his Assembly seat in Karnataka.
While the Karnataka unit of the BJP remains clueless in the absence of any communication, the ruling Congress in the state is hogging the limelight, as the state unit got the distinction to host the 26-party meeting of the Opposition.
The BJP is widely known to be a faction-ridden unit in Karnataka, while the party’s national general secretary (Organisation) B L Santhosh pulls most of the strings in the affairs of the outfit in the state even while former CM BS Yediyurappa is said to have maximum following among the cadre.
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