Dissolve K'taka assembly: Venkaiah asks Gov

Hyderabad, Oct 6: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader M Venkaiah Naidu today urged Karnataka Governor Rameshwar Thakur to dissolve the Assembly and order fresh elections following the party's decision to withdraw support to the Kumaraswamy Government.

''Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy should immediately tender his resignation and if he refused to do so, the Governor should immediately dismiss the Government and order for fresh elections, Mr Naidu told newspersons here.

Replying to a question, he said there was a possibility of the UPA government falling in the wake of serious differences between the Congress and the Left.

''The BJP is ready for simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and the Karnataka Assembly or separately,'' he added.

Mr Naidu, who was instrumental in the BJP reaching an understanding with the Janata Dal(Secular) to outwit the Congress, said the BJP MLAs in Karnataka would call on the Governor tomorrow to press the demand.

The Congress, which had 184 of 225 seats in the previous Assembly elections, had been reduced to 65 seats in the present Assembly and would face further erosion in its strength if it tried to get into an ''unholy understanding'' with the JD(S) now, Mr Naidu claimed.

Alleging that the JD(S) would go down in the history as ''perpetrators of political opportunism in the worst form by failing to adhere to the solemn promise given to the people while forming the JD(S)-BJP coalition government,'' he said the BJP would fight the next Assembly elections in Karnataka on the poll plank of ''worst form of betrayal of trust by the JD(S).''

UNI