Congress says BJP govt in Karnataka will fall after 5 December bypolls to 15 Assembly seats, claims party has ‘wafer-thin majority’

New Delhi: The BJP government in Karnataka, surviving with a “wafer-thin majority”, will fall after the 5 December bypolls to 15 Assembly segments, senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily said on Thursday. In an interview to PTI, Moily said, “The people of Karnataka are fed up with the misrule, mal-administration and inefficiency of (Chief Minister) BS Yediyurappa and after the 5 December bypolls, this government, surviving with a wafer-thin majority, will fall on its own.” In the 224-member Karnataka Assembly, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has 105 MLAs and is supported by one Independent legislator. The Opposition has 101 members — the Congress has 66, the Janata Dal (Secular) has 34 and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has one. There are 17 vacancies, of which 15 seats are going to polls. [caption id=“attachment_4393771” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File photo of Congress leader Veerappa Moily. PTI[/caption] The election in the Maski and Rajarajeshwari Nagar segments has been deferred in view of petitions pending in the Karnataka High Court relating to the 2018 state Assembly polls. Moily, a former Karnataka chief minister, said “as per the ground reports” he received, the Congress could win in 13 of the 15 seats in the bypolls, enough to “unseat Yediyurappa”. The Congress leader added that the time had come for Yediyurappa to vacate the chief minister’s chair as “in the history of the state”, he had not seen an inefficient chief minister like him. “He was not even able to prevail upon the Centre to release adequate funds for flood relief work as Karnataka witnessed two spells of heavy rains, affecting a vast number of people and their properties,” Moily said. While the state government had sought around Rs 38,000 crore, the BJP regime at the Centre released only Rs 1,200 crore as interim relief. “This is Yediyurappa’s ability to convince the Centre and get funds. The relief work has come to a standstill in various districts due to a paucity of funds, further inconveniencing the people,” Moily said. In the floods following an intensive south-west monsoon, 91 people were killed and seven lakh displaced as their dwellings were either washed out or damaged. A total of 103 talukas in 22 districts were affected in the southern state. Asked about JD(S) chief HD Deve Gowda’s recent statement that his party will no longer have a tie-up with the Congress, Moily said he would not attach much significance to such statements. “Deve Gowda has been saying this since the May 2018 Assembly polls,” the former Union minister said.