Final consultations for reinducting former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa into the BJP will begin during the party’s two-day State executive committee meeting scheduled to begin in Bangalore on Friday.
The meeting, to be presided over by BJP national president Rajnath Singh and attended by other senior leaders, will take up the issue of Yeddyurappa’s homecoming to regain the party’s footprint in once its only bastion in the South. The Lingayat strongman had left BJP after he was asked to step down from the chief minister’s post owing to corruption charges levelled against him, and had formed the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP).
The divorce cost the BJP dear as it lost the last Assembly elections badly, bringing Congress back to power.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, BJP had won 19 Lok Sabha seats, Congress six and JD(S) three, but this time the Congress expects to do much better. Sources in the BJP said that after the State unit takes a decision on Yeddyurappa’s fate, it will be forwarded to the central leadership for a final say.
The party leaders, however, are not willing to give a timeline for his re-entry into the party as opposition from a certain section, led by patriarch L K Advani, remains (on the ground that Yeddyurappa continues to face corruption charges).
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