BJP floods media with list of potential defectors to its side

Bengaluru: BJP upped its psychological war over the confidence vote in Karnataka Assembly on Friday with party workers circulating WhatsApp messages with names of Congress and JD (S) MLAs who are likely to switch over to their side even as former chief minister Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar and other senior leaders maintained that none of the Congress and JD (S) MLAs would do so.

A few of the legislators listed by the BJP workers have come on the record to scotch the rumours of them supporting the saffron party but the BJP workers insisted that were confident of B.S. Yeddyurappa government sailing through the crucial trust vote on Saturday evening.

The names of Lingayat leaders doing the rounds include Rajashekhar Patil, Eshwar Khandre, Amaregowda Bayyapur, Pratapgouda Patil, Mahantesh Kaujalagi, Shivananda Patil, Naganagouda Patil Kandakoor, Mallanna Ninganna Sali, Akhanda Srinivasamurthy,  C.S. Shivalli, M.Y. Patil and Devananda Chavan.

Missing Congress MLA Anand traced to city

A day ahead of the trust vote in the Karnataka Assembly, Anand Singh, the Hosapete Congress MLA who supposedly went ‘missing’ and whom Congress leaders claim had been ‘abducted’ and ‘kept in wrongful confinement’ by BJP leaders, turned up in Hyderabad. High level sources in the JD(S) also said that Pratapgowda Patil, the missing MLA from Maski had informed them that he too would join them in Hyderabad on Saturday morning to take the flight to Bengaluru where both, he and Singh, would vote for the JD(S)-Congress coalition.