BJP conducted ‘cattle auction’ in Karnataka, says Tharoor

Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor yesterday took a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the developments in Karnataka saying the party that banned cattle auctions had conducted one successfully in the southern state.“The party that banned cattle auctions has successfully conducted one in Karnataka! My admiration for the courage and principle shown by D K Shivakumar and those Congress MLAs who were neither cajoled nor cudgelled into changing their allegiance. We shall overcome one day,” the former federal minister tweeted.
His remarks came soon after the 14-month-old Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) government lost a trust vote in the assembly by six votes after a four-day debate on the confidence motion.
Of the 225-member assembly, 20 were not present for the floor test.
Chief Minister Kumaraswamy’s government was facing a major crisis for the last two weeks following the resignation of 17 MLAs.
The Congress accused the central government, the BJP’s central leadership, the Karnataka governor and the Maharashtra government of acting together to enable the coalition’s fall.
“Political morality and basic democratic values got defeated by the unscrupulous political horse-trading of the BJP in Karnataka,” Congress leader K C Venugopal said in a statement.
Venugopal who had been camping in Bengaluru since the 17 MLAs of the Congress and the JD-S resigned, said the “sabotage of a duly elected government in Karnataka carried out by the BJP is one of the most heinous and subversive instances of blatant political horse-trading the country has ever witnessed”.
“The coalition government was brought down by the nefarious joint efforts of the central government, the governor, the state government of Maharashtra and central BJP leadership.”
He alleged that the BJP carried out this political drama by offering huge amounts of black money and ministerial berths to MLAs to defect, as well as “misusing central agencies like Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax for black mailing and coercing MLAs”.
Venugopal said that the Congress and the JD-S fought on the floor of the house, in the Supreme Court as well as in the streets to uphold the democratic mores and values, and though the BJP won the numbers game, the Congress-JD(S) “had earned the moral victory”.
Meanwhile, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati suspended the party’s lone Karnataka MLA for indiscipline as he did not participate in the crucial trust vote despite having clear instructions to vote in favour of the government.
“BSP MLA N Mahesh, who was instructed to vote in favour of the Kumaraswamy government in Karnataka remained absent from the House during the trust vote which is a clear case of indiscipline and the party has taken it seriously. And thus Mahesh has been suspended from the party with immediate effect,” Mayawati tweeted.