After months of speculation, Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa finally submitted his resignation on Monday.
He announced his decision to resign at a programme to mark the celebration of two years of his government. He later went to the Raj Bhavan to submit his resignation to the Governor, Thawar Chand Gehlot. The council of ministers has also been dissolved.
Sources in the State BJP said the contenders for the post of chief minister include Prahalad Joshi, a union minister in the Narendra Modi Cabinet; Murgesh Nirani, a cabinet minister in the Yeddiyurappa government; BJP national general secretary CT Ravi and the party’s national organising secretary, BL Santhosh.
According to party sources, BJP was under extreme pressure to remove Yediyurappa because of widespread dissatisfaction within the party Yediyurappa, however, maintained that nobody pressurised him to submit his resignation.
Yediyurappa faced allegations of irregular allotment of government land to private individuals. There were also rumours doing the rounds of his sons’ high handedness in the administration including transfers of senior bureaucrats.
Sources say that the High Command could no longer ignore these charges and hence may have persuaded Yediyurappa to step down.
‘Roller coaster ride’
The 78-year-old politician has served as the chief minister for four terms and is the only chief minister to do so in Karnataka. An eight-time MLA, Yediyurappa has a chequered history at the helm. He became the chief minister in after leading the BJP to victory. However, he had to resign after he was indicted on in a corruption case in 2011. He was later acquitted in 2016. He had also formed his own party, Karnataka Janata Paksha after he fell out with the BJP. In 2014, he merged his party with the BJP and went on to win the parliamentary elections from the Shivamogga constituency.
Yediyurappa was sworn in again in 2018 as the chief minister but resigned two days later as he could not muster enough support to continue in his post. A year later, he was back as the chief minister after the previous Congress-JD (S) government fell.