Ahead of trust vote, Congress to hold legislative party meeting tomorrow

The Congress will hold a legislative party meeting here on Monday, ahead of the confidence motion in the state Assembly.

The scheduled meeting will come after Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar on Sunday disqualified 14 rebel MLAs from Congress and JD(S) under the anti-defection law and barred them from contesting elections till the expiry of the term of the 15th Legislative Assembly.

The 11 rebel Congress legislators who were disqualified were --Pratap Gowda Patil, BC Patil, Shivanand Hebbar, ST Somashekar, Shrimant Patil, BA Basavaraja, Anand Singh, R Roshan Baig, Muniratna, K Sudhakar and MTB Nagaraj.

The three MLAs disqualified are from JD(S) which include -- AH Vishwanath, Narayan Gowda and Gopalaiah.

On Thursday, three rebel Congress MLAs -- R Shankar, Ramesh Jarkiholi and Mahesh Kumathalli were disqualified by the Speaker.

Earlier this month, the rebel MLAs had pulled out from the Congress-JD(S) coalition, plunging the coalition government into a minority in the 225-member Assembly, which led to a political crisis in the state.

After days of high-drama and heated debates, the government fell on Tuesday as it lost the trust vote in the House. Following the defeat, Kumaraswamy submitted his resignation to Governor Vajubhai Vala at Raj Bhavan, along with his cabinet ministers.

On Friday, Karnataka BJP president BS Yediyurappa took oath as the new Chief Minister of Karnataka for the fourth time. He announced the tabling of a vote of confidence saying that his party will prove majority in the floor of the House on Monday.