K'taka crisis: BJP to parade its MLAs before President Patil

Following orders from the National Democratic Alliance, the Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to parade its MLAs before the President Pratibha Patil. The MLAs will be taken to New Delhi in three batches starting Monday evening. They would first meet the party high command and if the need be the MLAs would be paraded before the president on Tuesday.

The BJP government in Karnataka decided to hold the legislature session from June 2. An emergency cabinet meeting headed by Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa was held on Monday afternoon in Bengaluru following which the decision to convene the session was taken. Following the meeting a letter to the effect was written to the Governor H R Bhardwaj, who will need to give his nod to convene the session.

The parading of the MLAs will take place as the Union cabinet takes a final call on the governor's recommendation, which had asked for the imposition of president's rule in Karnataka.

Taking on Bhardwaj, the NDA decided to meet Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to demand his dismissal. "The NDA strongly condemns the action of Governor of Karnataka in sending a report to the Central government. The governor's conduct is partisan. It defies all constitutional norms and principles. There is absolutely no doubt that the Yeddyurappa government enjoys an overwhelming majority in the assembly," senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley told mediapersons.

He maintained that as a result of the Supreme Court judgment, the 11 suspended MLAs have been held to be members of the BJP and were bound by its whip.

With inputs from PTI

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"We intend to raise two specific issues with the prime minister. Firstly, this report is unconstitutional and obviously must be rejected by the central government. And secondly, the governor of Karnataka repeatedly is indulging in unconstitutionality. And so, for defying the constitution he should be recalled as governor," Jaitley said.

The NDA leadership has also asked Yeddyurappa to parade the MLAs in front of the president to prove that he has the numbers. "We shall take all the MLAs supporting the government to the President and demonstrate our strength in front of Rashtrapati Bhawan since a floor test is no longer required," Jaitley said.

The NDA maintained that 121 MLAs support the Yeddyurappa-led BJP government in Karnataka while the opposition has only 97 in the 225-member Assembly.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is also miffed at Bhardwaj for not heeding to the chief minister's advise to call a special session of the assembly on Monday.