BJP: Won’t bow before BSY

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The BJP central leadership continues to dilly-dally on the issue of giving a prominent post to rebel leader B.S. Yeddyurappa with a delegation led by Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar failing to extract a concrete assurance from the party big brass on suitably rehabilitating the former CM.

This is likely to speed up Mr Yeddyurappa’s exit from the party and could trigger a vertical split in BJP with the Lingayat str­o­­ngman announcing plans to launch his Karnataka Janata Party on Dec. 10.

Though central leaders asserted they have not shut the door for negotiations, sources said BSY’s outbursts against senior leader L.K. Advani and his habit of setting deadlines and conditions for talks, have not gone down well with the leadership.

Sen­ior leader Arun Jaitley reportedly told the delegation that the party will honour BSY if he is prepared for talks without preconditions.

Leaders like Murli Man­ohar Joshi and Rajnath Singh are keen on sending out signals that they will not bow before an individual, however powerful he may be.

Some leaders wondered if talks were possible with BSY when he had already made up his mind to leave BJP.

Sources quoted Mr Jaitley telling the delegation that they had given in to BSY’s demand by making Mr Shettar CM but he was evading talks with the leadership.

The delegation could not meet party president Nitin Gadkari who is busy in consultation with legal experts in Nagpur and Mumbai on the scam charges he is facing.

Mr Gadkari has assigned the task of talking to Karnataka leaders to Mr Jaitley and state in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan.

The state delegation contended that it would be difficult to face the 2013 assembly elections without Mr Yeddyurappa.

The delegation included Mr Shettar, his deputies K.S. Eshwarappa and R. Ashok.