In politics, there are no permanent enemies and former CM B.S. Yeddyurappa proved that by rushing off to Raj Bhavan for a hush-hush meeting with governor H.R. Bhardwaj on December 22.
The purpose, according to sources, was to find a way to dislodge the Jagadish Shettar government before his fellow Lingayat presents the state budget in February and walks away with the applause for presenting a populist budget.
The governor and Mr Yeddyurappa never had an amicable working relationship when the latter was CM from 2008-11.
Mr Bhardwaj was perturbed over the land and mining scam allegations against Mr Yeddyurappa, who was in no mood to give up the chief minister’s post till Justice Santosh Hegde indicted him in his report on illegal mining. Equations have changed since than with sources close to BSY confiding to this newspaper that the closed door meeting lasted for two hours. Mr Yeddyurapa categoricaly told the governor that the Shettar government no longer enjoyed a majority in the Assembly and had no right to present a budget.
Surprisingly, this was not the first but fifth secret meeting of the former chief minister with the governor in 2012. This newspaper has first reported in July that BSY held four secret meetings with the governor (from June 20 to 28) just two weeks before D.V. Sadananda Gowda resigned from CM post. Mr Yeddyurappa had then reportedly requested the governor to dissolve the Assembly.
This time, he met the Governor after the opposition Congress and JD(S) submitted a memorandum to Mr Bhardwaj requesting him not to allow the CM of a minority government to present the budget. The former CM who had all along been waiting for a valid reason to topple the Shettar government, got just that when the Congress gave a memorandum maintaining Shettar did not have the numbers.
Sources close to Mr Yeddyurappa said the Governor could not be faulted for this as he had merely discharged his constitutional obligation by asking the former CM if his loyalists supported the Shettar government?
During the meeting, Mr Yeddyurappa requested the Governor to ask Shettar to prove his majority before he presents the budget. If this happens, his loyalist MLAs will vote against the government, sources said.
Raj Bhavan neither confirmed nor denied the meeting. Mr V.S. Prabhakar, ADC to the Governor told DC that he was not aware of the meeting. “I was not present in Raj Bhavan at the time you referred to because we have worked under different schedules”, he said.