India's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Saturday withdrew its crucial support to the coalition government in Karnataka, plunging the southern state, a global hub of information technology, into a political crisis.
BJP leader Yashwant Sinha announced the decision of his party's parliamentary board after former prime minister H. D. Deve Gowda, who heads his son Karnataka chief minister H. D. Kumaraswamy's Janata Dal (Secular) party, declined to honor a coalition promise to hand over power to the Hindu nationalists.
The move could bring about the fall of Kumaraswamy's government and push the state to a mid-term election.
Both parties, who share no common ideology, joined hands in January last year to cobble together a majority required to claim power on an agreement that the JD (S) would lead the government in Karnataka for the first 20 months and the BJP another.
They stitched an alliance after Gowda's party had pulled out support to the state government under the Congress party, which is in power at the federal level.
In the 2004 Karnataka elections, the BJP won 79 seats, the Congress 65 and the JD (S) 58 in the 225-member state assembly.
"The JD(S) decision is an insult to the 2004 mandate which was in favor of the BJP and we want fresh elections in Karnataka," Sinha said after a meeting of his party's highest decision-making body in New Delhi.
Karnataka BJP legislature party leader B. S. Yediyurappa, who was supposed to take the top post under the coalition pact, was also present at the meeting.
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article