Party may reinduct rebel MLAs if they admit their mistake: JD(S) Karnataka president

Janata Dal-Secular Karnataka unit president HK Kumaraswamy on Tuesday said that the party may consider taking back the rebel MLAs if they admit that they had made a mistake.

"If the MLAs who had left the party and joined BJP want to come back and rejoin JD(S), we will look into it. If they admit that they made a mistake, we might consider allowing them to re-join the party," Kumaraswamy told reporters here.

Kumaraswamy's remarks came as reports emerged of several MLAs including Raju Gowda, H Vishwanath, and MTB Nagaraj, who had deserted JD(S) last year and joined the BJP, being unhappy over their possible exclusion from the state cabinet in the new expansion scheduled to take place on February 6.

Sources say that many of the JD(S) and Congress defectors are trying to get back to their respective parties after they were not included in the cabinet.

However, sources in the BJP say that the MLAs are set to stay till Thursday as in-party consultations might take place within BJP to placate the dissenting MLAs.

The 14-month old Congress-JDS coalition government, led by Kumaraswamy fell in July last year after 17 MLAs of the alliance filed their resignations, paving the way for BJP, which was the single largest party, to form the government in Karnataka.

The rebel legislators were disqualified by then speaker KR Ramesh Kumar under the anti-defection law after they tendered their resignation. The Supreme Court later upheld their disqualification but allowed them to contest the by-polls.