The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will formally announce the replacement of Karnataka Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda with Rural Development Minister Jagadish Shettar, reports said on Sunday.
The Vokaliga community leader, Sadananda Gowda will meet BJP president Nitin Gadkari today evening and tender his resignation, sources said.
Gowda met party stalwart LK Advani and Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley yesterday evening in the national capital and held marathon discussions with the party leaders. It is being learnt that 59-year-old Gowda expressed readiness to quit.
Shettar will be the third Chief Minister in four years in Karnataka, the only southern state having a BJP government. His nomination will mark the second change in 11 months.
Gowda, who had asked the BJP central leadership not to take any decision in haste, contending that he had put in his best as the CM, to give a corruption-free government, changed his line soon after arriving in Delhi and said he would go by the party high command’s decision.
“As I have said earlier, I would abide by whatever decision the party high command would take on the leadership issue. If I am asked to quit, I will resign and if I am asked to continue, I will stay,” he told reporters on Saturday
The decision is being viewed as a victory for former Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa who has given sleepless nights to the BJP leadership ever since he was forced to resign by the central leadership in 2011 following a Lokayukta report, which indicted him on illegal mining and bribery charges.
It seems the saffron party, which for the first time came to power in a southern state in 2007, doesn’t want to upset Yeddyurappa by continuing with Gowda as the chief minister.
The Vokaliga community to which Gowda belongs hasn’t been much faithful to the BJP, whereas politically influential Lingayat community, which makes up 17 percent of the state’s 65 million population, is generally believed to be strong supporter of the BJP. This factor also seems to be playing in the minds of the party central leadership.
Earlier this week, BJP sources told a news agency in Bangalore that most of the central leaders were veering towards replacing Gowda with Shettar, mainly because Assembly Elections are due May next and the bickering cannot be allowed to persist.
They said though Gowda and his supporters have been resisting his removal, the central leaders believe that the Gowda camp would not create problems like the Yeddyurappa faction and would abide by the decision.
Interestingly, Gowda was a Lok Sabha member when he was hand-picked by Yeddyurappa to succeed him last July when the BJP’s first chief minister in South India was forced to quit.
The party is also likely to appoint a Deputy Chief Minister to placate other senior party leaders representing different communities of Karnataka.
The names of minister R Ashok and Karnataka BJP chief KS Eshwarappa are doing the rounds for the post of Deputy Chief Minister.