Done deal: BSY returns to BJP after year in exile

Yeddyurappa had quit the BJP in 2012 after charges of corruption were labelled against him.

A day after the Karnataka Congress inducted two allegedly corruption-tainted leaders into the state Cabinet,the opposition BJP sealed a deal to bring back former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa,who quit the party under a graft cloud in 2012,Thursday.

The move was expected since September when Narendra Modi became the party prime ministerial candidate and,like the Congress Cabinet inductions,is aimed at gaining electoral dividends since Yeddyurappa is considered a leader of the dominant Lingayat community in north Karnataka that has been a strong supporter of the BJP.

The return of Yeddyurappa after exactly a year in exile was sealed by a delegation of senior-most BJP leaders,who called on the former chief minister at a private hotel following a party core committee meeting.

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The Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) Yeddyurappa created will now merge with the BJP. The addition of six KJP MLAs will give the BJP more numbers than the JD(S) in the Karnataka Assembly and make it the principal opposition party.

The BJP had suffered a humiliating loss in the May 2013 Assembly polls in Karnataka,held after Yeddyurappa parted ways with the party. The KJP grabbed 10 per cent of the vote share in the state splitting the BJP support base among Lingayats and reducing the then ruling party to 40 seats after a high of 110 seats in 2008.

With the return of Yeddyurappa,the BJP is hoping to replicate its 2009 Parliament poll performance when it had won 19 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka under the leadership of the Lingayat strongman.

Yeddyurappa has through the last five months of efforts to reconcile with the BJP stated that he is returning to make Modi,with whom he enjoys a good rapport,the prime minister.

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I have decided to merge the KJP with the BJP and we shall work together from tomorrow, Yeddyurappa said at a joint press address with BJP state president Prahlad Joshi after a meeting with party seniors,including former chief minister Jagadish Shettar.

We welcome Yeddyurappa back to BJP. With this move,we put everything that happened in the past behind us, Joshi said.

Yeddyurappa had exited the BJP after being forced to quit as chief minister and sidelined in the light of a Lokayukta report indicting him and his two sons for receiving bribes to grant mining favours to a private company. They are facing prosecution by the CBI in the case.

Joshi said the central unit of the party took certain decisions in 2011 considering the serious charges brought by an agency against Yeddyurappa. The BJP,however,never wanted him to quit the party,he said.

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The KJP is expected to meet the Assembly Speaker Friday and convey its intent to merge with the BJP. The party will subsequently write to the Election Commission and KJP MLAs will become BJP MLAs,a functionary said.