Senior BJP leaders target BSY over choice of office-bearers

Bengaluru, Aug 17: Senior BJP leaders are said to have confronted party president B?S?Yeddyurappa at the party's core committee meeting on Tuesday questioning his “unilateral” selection and appointment of office-bearers.

The 11-member core committee, the party's highest decision-making body in the state, held its first meeting after Yeddyurappa took over as state-unit president in April this year.

There has been simmering discontent in the party regarding Yeddyurappa's choice of office-bearers and presidents of district units. A section of the leaders had charged that Yeddyurappa had given prominence to those from his erstwhile outfit Karnataka Janata Party while ignoring senior functionaries in the BJP.

At the core-committee meeting, senior leaders, including Ananth Kumar, Jagadish Shettar, K?S?Eshwarappa and Nalin Kumar Kateel are learnt to have openly snubbed Yeddyurappa on the appointment of office-bearers and district presidents.

Sources in the party said the leaders minced no words in expressing their dissatisfaction over Yeddyurappa's style of functioning. He was told, it is said, he cannot presume that the party was his “personal property”. All decisions had to be taken after taking the core-committee members into confidence. There was rebellion in Chikkamagaluru, Dakshina Kannada, Tumakuru and Shivamogga units of the party following the appointment of office-bearers, the leaders said.

Yeddyurappa, who was taken aback by the confrontation, is learnt to have agreed to hold the core-committee meetings every month. However, he told the meeting that he is ready to accommodate senior functionaries who might have been left out from the office-bearers' list but there was no question of dropping anybody whom he had already appointed.