Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy likely to resign on Thursday: Sources

Sources added that it is likely that the Karnataka chief minister Kumaraswamy would also request the Governor to dissolve the assembly.

Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy is expected to tender his resignation on Thursday after the cabinet meeting. Sources told Zee Media that Kumaraswamy is likely to call a cabinet meeting at around 11 AM on Thursday and after attending the meeting he would go and meet Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala to submit his resignation. Sources added that it is likely that the Karnataka chief minister would also request the Governor to dissolve the assembly. 

Kumaraswamy met his father and JDS chief HD Deve Gowda on Thursday evening to decide the future course of action and it is learnt that during the meeting the father-son duo reached at the conclusion that Kumaraswamy should step down as chief minister as soon as possible.

In a related development, Congress leader and former Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah are threatening Congress MLAs in Karnataka and forcing them to resign. "It is quite evident that Amit Shah and Narendra Modi are behind all things and they are defecting our MLAs by offering money, using power and position, threatening them by using Income Tax, ED, CBI. This is the murder of democracy. BJP is anti-democratic, anti-constitutional and anti-system," said Siddaramaiah.

Earlier on Wednesday, Siddaramaiah said that Governor Vajubhai Vala is constitutional head of the state and he belongs to the "whole state", yet he is not giving time to Congress leaders to meet him. 

Meanwhile, Congress leader D K Shivakumar, who landed in Mumbai on Wednesday morning to meet all the rebel Congress-JDS MLAs, was not allowed by Mumbai Police to enter the hotel where the rebel MLAs are staying. Shivakumar, however, remained outside the hotel for around five hours before he was taken into detention by Mumbai Police and taken away from outside the hotel.

For his part, Shivakumar expressed hope that all rebel MLAs would support the government and Congress-JDS coalition would survive the crisis. Shivakumar was deported to Bengaluru by the Mumbai Police later on Wednesday. Talking to media after being released from detention, Shivakumar said: "It is shameful what the BJP has done to democracy... the government machinery is being misused."

The rebel MLAs on Wednesday filed a plea before the Supreme Court challenging the Assembly Speaker`s decision to not accept their resignations. the Congress-JDS coalition is now on the brink of collapse as two more Karnataka Congress legislators, M.T.B. Nagaraj and D. Sudhakar, resigned on Wednesday.

If the Speaker accepts all the resignations then Congress' strength is the Assembly will reduce from 79 to 66, including the Speaker. Sources claimed that 3-4 more Congress MLAs are planning to resign before the start of monsoon session of the state legislature on Friday. Interestingly, Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar has refused to accept the resignations of the MLAs, saying at least eight resignations were not as per law.