For the second day in succession, the Karnataka Assembly was adjourned, following the pleas by Congress MLAs. Though the governor had asked the chief minister to prove his majority at 1:30 pm and later again at 6pm, the CM did not pay heed.
Bengaluru: The long wait for the confidence motion to be put to vote only gets longer as Speaker Ramesh Kumar again adjourned the Karnataka Assembly session to Monday (July 22).
Drama on day 2 of the extended confidence motion only continued from the point it had left on day 1. In fact, two JD(S) MLAs Srinivas Gowda and Sa Ra Mahesh levelled massive allegations that the BJP had offered crores together to buy them.
Srinivas Gowda pointed fingers at BJP MLAs Ashwathnarayan and SR Vishwanath, Sa Ra Mahesh trained his guns at JD(S) MLA H Vishwanath (in conjunction with BJP) offering him Rs 28 crore.
At this point, the BJP decided to move a privilege motion against Srinivas Gowda.
By this time, the governor’s deadline of 1: 30pm had already been violated. Chief minister HD Kumaraswamy easily washed his hands of the issue by escalating it to the Speaker.
And when the House reconvened at 3pm, the governor sent another directive to the CM, asking him to prove his majority by 6pm. But there was no hint of the CM proving his majority as he put it back in the court of the Speaker and called the official direction a “love letter”.
A lot of leaders from the coalition debated and discussed the role of Governor and his alleged overreach in asking the CM to prove his majority.
A special mention has to be made about JD(S) MLA Shivalinge Gowda who openly said that the coalition would intentionally elongate the confidence motion to thwart the attempts by the BJP to defeat them.
Later in the evening, coalition members began pressuring the Speaker to adjourn the House on Monday. But the BJP members were not the ones to relent.
However, a little after 8 pm, the expected transpired. The Speaker spoke to CLP leader Siddaramaiah and adjourned the House to Monday (July 22) at 11am, thereby honouring the pleas of coalition members while dishonouring that of the BJP MLAs.
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