Congress, JD(S) members spend second night in Karnataka Assembly

Opposition MLAs in of the Karnataka Assembly belonging to the Congress and JD(S) spent a second night in the house calling for action against illegal mining activities of the enterprise owned by the powerful Reddy brothers. The two brothers are senior ministers in chief minister Yeddyurappa's cabinet.

The Opposition is in no mood to settle for anything less than a CBI probe even as the chief minister remains firmly opposed to it.

Yesterday, the state governor, H K Bhardwaj met president Pratibha Patil in Delhi to apprise her on the root cause of all the commotion. Following his meeting with the president, Bhardwaj told reporters that the brothers cannot be allowed to continue in the government.

On Monday, opposition MLAs spent the night in the Assembly, and then refused return home on Tuesday after the speaker adjourned the Assembly for the day.
 
What the opposition - mainly the Congress party and the JD(S) is aggressively pushing for is a CBI inquiry against the Reddy brothers, Karunakara and Janardhan.

Last week, on Friday, the aggressive posturing almost led to violence in the Assembly and on Monday morning, Opposition MLAs showed up wearing hard-hats, insisting they feared for their safety as they had been threatened by the BJP members.

The Reddy brothers wield enormous clout and Yeddyurappa had faced their wrath only a few months back when he had introduced policies that affected their business interest. In November last year the brothers instigated a massive rebellion in the ranks of the ruling party which threatened to bring down the ministry.