The speaker told Kumaraswamy that "this (SIT) should not lead to a witch-hunt. The probe should be only to establish the truth."
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday rubbished reports that he was trying to engineer defection in Rashtriya Janata Dal to bolster numbers of his government which at present is surviving on support of Independents and Congress Legislators.
The elections to the Upper House from the state, where assembly polls are due later this year, have received greater attention with BJP president Amit Shah and Union Minister Smriti Irani entering the fray and the Congress putting up its heavyweight Ahmed Patel.
Kumaraswamy made the stunning claim that the BJP offered the MLAs of his party Rs 100 crore and ministerial berths.
Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas on Saturday confirmed reports that he had been approached by a newly-elected Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament to join the saffron party soon after the general election results were declared. Vishwas told ANI, "I got a call from a newspaper yesterday; they wanted to confirm about this proposal for me from the BJP. I thought I should not lie, and if I have been contacted them, I must divulge that news."
'Why is the entire Cabinet running around in Bangalore?' 'Why are they making arrangements for horse-trading?' 'Is this not the BJP's greed for power?' 'They have won the entire country. Why are they so desperate for Karnataka?'
The 14 MLAs who had resigned earlier this month include Pratapgouda Patil, BC Patil, Shivaram Hebbar, ST Somashekhar, BA Basavaraja, Anand Singh, R Roshan Baig, Munirathna, K Sudhakar, MTB Nagaraj, AH Vishwanath, K Gopalaiah, Narayana Gowda and Shrimanth Patil.
The Congress has convened a CLP meeting on Friday ahead of budget presentation and warned its MLAs that absence would invite action under the Anti-Defection Law.
Kumaraswamy had proved right the adage that politics is the art of the possible, but the science graduate failed to get his chemistry right in keeping the coalition legislators together to ensure his government's longevity.
The meeting was convened by the party to assess whether its flock was intact amid speculation that some of the MLAs had switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The EC maintained that use of none of the above in Rajya Sabha polls was not a new move as it was introduced in 2014 after the Supreme Court in 2013 made it mandatory to have the NOTA option in EVMs.
The man who threw stones at Rahul's vehicle has been detained.
Since the Mahabharata the Yadavs have been known for infighting. And the 2017 UP election proved yet another example of that, says Nazarwala.
Though EPS has sworn peace for now, or so it seems, his camp is said to be considering the possibility of calling an early meeting of the party's general council, to get a mandate in his favour before things went out of control. Ground-level indications are that OPS had lost his limited base, which alone had forced him to patch up with the other, reportedly at the instance of the BJP ally at the Centre, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The move came at a time when deliberations between the Congress, the NCP and the Shiv Sena seemingly reached the final stage on Friday.
The new CM said the coalition government will work for the people and was not here to fulfil personal interests.
'The BJP believes it has little to lose from a loss of alliance with the Shiv Sena. Fighting alone gives the BJP the chance to test its troops today, and then rework its tactics if necessary, before the big test in 2019,' says T V R Shenoy.
'Who's providing all this money to the BJP? And who's providing all this money to the Congress?' 'Where did all this money come from?' 'Who is enabling all these MLAs to be bought for Rs 50, 60 crores?' 'There's one MLA on whose behalf somebody claimed that the BJP invited him for Rs 60 crores. Whose money is this?'
He secured required 44 votes after votes of two Congress MLAs who cross-voted for BJP were rejected by EC.
