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Before the Karnataka assembly was adjourned on Thursday without a trust vote, Bharatiya Janata Party leader B S Yeddyurappa declared his party members would stay put in the House itself overnight and even till the time the trust vote was decided.
"We will stay until the trust vote is decided," Yeddyurappa said after the BJP, exasperated over the delay in taking up the voting, also rushed a delegation to the Governor to ask the Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar to conclude the trust vote process by the end of the day itself.
BJP leaders said they were mulling moving the Supreme Court in the light of Thursday's developments.
BJP alleged the ruling coalition was deliberately prolonging the trust vote to buy time to shore up its numbers and save the government.
Shortly after the assembly rocked by bedlam was adjourned, Governor Vajubhai Vala shot off a letter to Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, asking him to prove his majority by 1.30 pm Friday.
In his letter, Vala said resignation of 15 ruling combine MLAs and withdrawal of support by two independents 'prima facie' indicated he has lost the confidence of the House.
20 lawmakers did not turn up on Thursday, including 17 from the ruling coalition, 12 of whom are corralled in a hotel in Mumbai, as the House debated in a surcharged atmosphere.
If the resignations of 15 MLAs (12 from Congress and 3 from Janata Dal-Secular) are accepted or if they abstain, the ruling coalition's tally will plummet to 101, (excluding the Speaker) reducing the Kumaraswamy government to a minority.
This is the third motion on trust vote in the assembly after the 2018 assembly polls yielded a fractured mandate with the BJP emerging as the single largest party with 104 seats but failing to mobilise numbers.
Yeddyurappa had resigned as CM after being in office for three days before facing the trust vote in May last year. Kumaraswamy who succeeded him had won the trust vote after forming the coalition government.