The Congress and JD(S) leaders, who have resigned from Assembly, have moved the Supreme Court on Wednesday accusing Speaker Ramesh Kumar of abandoning his constitutional duty and deliberately delaying the acceptance of their resignations.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi took note of the submission of senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the rebel MLAs, and assured him that it will see whether their petition can be listed for an urgent hearing tomorrow.
The Karnataka coalition crisis took a stunning turn today as senior Congress leader DK Shivakumar was stopped from entering the five-star hotel in Mumbai where rebel lawmakers are staying, after they wrote to the police for protection from him.
On Tuesday midnight, 10 of the 12 MLAs put up in the luxury hotel in Powai wrote to Mumbai Police, saying they feared a threat to their lives, and asked that Karnataka Minister and Congress leader DK Shivakumar be prevented from entering the hotel.
Shivakumar, the Congress troubleshooter, said he will not leave without meeting the MLAs.
Meanwhile, BJP leader BS Yeddyurappa are protesting along with party cadre in front of Vidhana Soudha as the governor has not accepted the resignations of the Congress-JD(S) MLAs which are in a correct format.
"Now we have decided to sit in dharna in front of Vidhan Soudha in front of Gandhi Chowk. We will meet the Governor and the Speaker. According to the speaker, 5 to 6 persons have submitted their resignation in correct format. Then why is he delaying this. He must accept them immediately. I will talk to Ramesh Kumar," he said while speaking to media in Bengaluru.
On July 9, Karnataka Assembly Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar had said that the resignation letters of the wight out of 13 MLAs of the ruling coalition were not in the prescribed format and later asked the legislators to submit them properly.
The 13-month old Congress-JD(S) government slumped into crisis following the resignation of 11 MLAs from the membership of the state Assembly last week.
The state Assembly has 225 members, including one nominated MLA. The halfway mark in the 225-member Assembly is 113.
The Congress-JD(S) coalition is making all efforts to protect its government which seems to have fallen short of a majority.
Shivakumar’s decision to meet the rebels comes a day after Karnataka Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar rejected the resignations of nine of 14 coalition MLAs on the ground that they were not tendered in the correct format.
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