 | « Back to article | Print this article |
B S Yeddyurappa, who had quit the Bharatiya Janata Party in a huff after he was forced to give up the Karnataka chief minister's post over charges of corruption, is planning to return to the saffron party.
Yeddyurappa may formally join the BJP, say sources, in October, during BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's visit to Karnataka.
Yeddyurappa had formed the Karnataka Janatha Party after quitting the BJP over a year ago.
Top leaders of the KJP will hold meetings on Wednesday and Thursday to decide on a final date for the party's merger with the BJP.
Yeddyurappa, once considered the BJP’s strongest leader in south India, has a long list of conditions before the merger.
He wants party patriarch L K Advani to be kept out of the decision-making process and Modi to take over.
Yeddyurappa wants to be made the president of the BJP's Karnataka unit. He wants the task of handpicking the candidates who will contest the Lok Sabha polls in 2014. He wants senior posts in the party for his close aides Shobha Karandlage and Dhananjay Kumar. He wants honourable entries for all those leaders who had walked out of the BJP along with him.
The former BJP strongman has always claimed that he respected Modi as a leader and would consider returning to the BJP after the latter was made its prime ministerial candidate.
Yeddyurappa had expressed happiness over Modi's nomination as the PM candidate and stated that the time was right for his return to the BJP.
It is not yet clear if the BJP leadership is ready to accommodate Yeddyurappa and his followers, as well as agree to all of the former CM's conditions, to facilitate his return.