The high court verdict freeing former Chief Minister of Karnataka, B S Yeddyurappa from the illegal mining report will change the political weather in Karnataka once again. Vicky Nanjappa reports.
Yeddyurappa, who was ousted because he found a mention in the illegal mining report, has been making a strong pitch to reinstate him as the CM of Karnataka once again, a move that has been opposed by the party's central leadership.
Now, however, the case for Yeddyurappa has become even stronger and his followers have decided to up the ante once again. Yeddyurappa and his followers had planned a mammoth rally in Hubli, on March 11.
However, this rally which was threatening to be a no-show is now expected to be a gala event, thanks to this verdict.
The battle within the Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka would become even more interesting now. The question is whether they would reinstate Yeddyurappa immediately because of the verdict.
The answer would is no, and he may have to wait for sometime more before his dream is realised once again. The general feeling in the party leadership at the moment is that he still has a couple of cases pertaining to denotification against him.
Even if they were to make the CM now, there is always this danger of those pending cases coming back to bite him. The BJP would then find itself in a very embarrassing position even they have to ask him to step down once again.
"The leadership has decided to wait it out now and will eventually tell Yeddyurappa that he already has waited for six months, so he can wait for some more time," says a source.
Yeddyurappa too is expected to fall in line, since he now believes that the BJP does need him to win an election for them. Moreover, even the party leadership does realise that they need Yeddyurappa and they themselves would pray that he is cleared in all cases in the next couple of months so that they could hand over the charge to him.
If Yeddyurappa is given a clean chit, then the BJP would reinstate him in the blink of an eye. Keeping Yeddyurappa being out of power does have a lot of disadvantages for the party.
He is still a hit with the Lingayats who constitute a major vote share in Karnataka. He is also still quite popular with the rural voters.
However, the Central leadership which always knew Yeddyurappa's importance has also managed to drive the point across to the big man in the Karnataka BJP.
"He had become very arrogant and had started to think that he was invincible. However his ouster and the party's adamant attitude not to reinstate him has mellowed him down a great deal. He has also learnt that he cannot get away with anything and will need to focus a great deal on administration in case he has to survive," said a source.
Yeddyurappa may wait a while more and if at all he finds that things are not going his way in the BJP he may just quit when the elections are round the corner. The BJP did realise that losing Yeddyurappa would mean losing 60 seats, and in the past few days they saw Karnataka Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda cozying up to Janata Dal-Secular supermo Deve Gowda.
Some members of the BJP believed that if they managed to enter into an alliance with the JD-S, they would still sustain power in case Yeddyurappa quit. Yeddyurappa however changed his stance and decided to stay put in the party fold.
