How did the BJP overturn its Parliamentary Board's decision?

New Delhi, Oct 27 (UNI) Did the BJP upturn its decision to seek the dissolution of the Karnataka assembly to swallow the Janata Dal (Secular) offering to become part of the National Democratic Alliance in the coming Parliamentary elections? The answer is yes according to a BJP leader who was witness to the hurried meeting where the decision was taken at the backstage of the BJP State Executive meeting at Lucknow.

BJP President Rajnath Singh was sitting in the dias when the first offer came from from former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy.

The party initially did not take this seriously till they received another call from former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda who told his BJP counterpart that he did not want President's rule in Karnataka or the dissolution of the House.

Mr Gowda was initially told that the BJP would come back to him after placing his proposal before a formal Parliamentary Board meeting as it had decided to face elections. When persistant calls started coming from JD (S), Mr Singh took BJP leaders like Mr Arun Jaitley, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and BJP Organising Secretary Ram Lal to the back stage of the Executive where they decided to consult Leader of Opposition L K Advani and former BJP President M Venkaiah Naidu, other Parliamentary Board members and Karnataka BJP leaders on telephone and a decision was taken to accept the J D (S) proposal. "Thus a structured decision taken by the Parliamentary Board was upturned in a matter of hours", party sources said.

Observers feel that the BJP was keen to accept the JD (S) bait despite its 'unpredictable past behaviour' because such an alliance ahead of Gujarat elections would be a booster.

UNI