SOM

Bangalore, June 2: There are strong rumours in the State capital that three former Ministers of the JD(S) are making hectic efforts to split the JD(S) and join the BJP.

A former Minister from the old Mysore-region and two former Ministers from the Mumbai-Karnataka region, who contacted the Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa on Friday, told him that they were ready to join the BJP along with 19 JD(S) MLAs, it is said.

According to sources, though the BJP had got into the act of splitting the JD(S) soon after the election, the efforts had not gained momentum. But now three former Ministers have themselves volunteered to join BJP along with two-third of JD(S) MLAs.

RSS interferes

The sources said the former Ministers are awaiting a green signal from Yeddyurappa. The Chief Minister who tried to get green signal in this regard from RSS, has not yet been successful.

The RSS leaders are of the opinion that there is no immediate need to split the JD(S) and the present situation should continue until the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.

As such, the RSS leaders, at a meeting held at the RSS office 'Keshava Krupa' yesterday turned down the proposal of the Yeddyurappa regarding engineering a split in JD(S).

But Yeddyurappa has continued to mount pressure on the RSS leaders to give him a green signal to split the JD(S), as proposed by the three former Ministers.

Out of the three former Ministers, two have been elected to the Assembly this time, while the Minister from the old Mysore region, was defeated.

These are the Ministers who were in favour of JD(S) transferring power to Yeddyurappa when the then Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy was relu-ctant to do so last year.

During the crisis in JD(S)-BJP coalition, these are the Ministers who tried to broker a compromise between Kumaraswamy and Yeddyurappa.