The Congress on Tuesday expelled 14 former Karnataka legislators whose resignations led to the collapse of the party’s ruling coalition with the Janata Dal (Secular) this month.
The 14 rebel ex-MLAs who were expelled for anti-party activities were Pratap Gouda Patil, BC Patil, Shivaram Hebbar, ST Somashekar, Byrathi Basavaraj, Anand Singh, Roshan Baig, K Sudhakar, Muniratna, MTB Nagaraj, Shrimant Patil, R Shankar, Ramesh Jarkiholi and Mahesh Kumathahalli. All of them have already been disqualified from the Assembly.
The Congress party’s action came a week after the 14-month-old coalition lost the trust vote in the Karnataka Assembly. On July 23, the JD(S)-Congress coalition got votes from 99 MLAs in favour, while 105 legislators voted against it. The floor test was necessitated by the resignations of the MLAs. All the 14 legislators had abstained from voting in the trust vote.
The coalition government had come to power in May 2018, when Karnataka ended up with a fractured mandate after Assembly elections.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has now formed the government in the state.
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