State leaders up the ante

With the BJP high command playing its cards close to its chest on the fate of Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa, State party leaders who took part in the crucial core committee meeting in Delhi on Friday evening are learnt to be in favour of changing the leadership in the State.

State party chief K S Eshwarappa, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister Jagadish Shettar and national general secretary Ananth Kumar are learnt to have informed the leadership about the scams involving Yeddyurappa and his family and the beating the party image has suffered.

Besides Eshwarappa and Shettar, Member of Parliament P D V Sadananda Gowda and BJP organising secretary Santosh took part in the core committee meeting chaired by the BJP National President Nitin Gadkari, who had one-to-one meeting with each of the State leaders to elicit their opinion.

Party sources said leaders from the State told the BJP top brass that the party would find it difficult to face the forthcoming elections to the zilla and taluk panchayats if the chief minister was not changed. The future of the party and 4,000 party candidates (in the ZP and TP polls) in particular will be at stake if Yeddyurappa was not removed they are said to have told Gadkari.

Loyalty parade

To project that he still commands support among the party legislators, Yeddyurappa is learnt to be taking a group of loyal ministers and MLAs along with him to Delhi, for further discussions with the high command on the Karnataka crisis. He is likely to leave for Delhi on Sunday evening.

Meanwhile, the beleaguered chief minister launched a full-throttle attack on the father-son duo of the JD(S), H D Deve Gowda and H D Kumaraswamy while participating in functions to distribute sarees to the parents of Bhagyalakshmi scheme beneficiaries in various parts of the State.