Bowing to the directives of the party central leadership,
three BJP ministers in Karnataka today resigned after they were engulfed in a
row over watching sleazy clippings during the Assembly proceedings.
A day after the incident caused huge embarrassment to the BJP government, all
the three tainted ministers were summoned to the party office and were asked to
submit their resignation after a meeting of the senior leaders presided over by
Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda.
Minister for Cooperation Laxman Savadi, Minister for Women and Child
Development C C Patil and Minister for Ports and Science and Technology Krishna
Palemar announced after a meeting with top leaders that they have decided to
quit.
"We don't want the party and the government to face further embarrassment.
All of us have decided to resign from the ministry", Savadi told reporters
outside the BJP office.
Savadi and Patil demanded that the Speaker of the state assembly K G Bopaiah
institute a probe into the issue of watching the porno video footage and
expressed confidence that "they would come clean from the
allegations".
Palemar, another minister, who had to pay a price for allegedly providing the
blue film clippings to Savadi said he was contemplating legal course over the
issue.
Savadi and Patil were caught yesterday while they were allegedly viewing the
porno video footage inside the state assembly, an incident that battered the
image of the Sadananda Gowda Government and BJP, evoking widespread
condemnation across the state.
Under the directions of BJP National President Nitin Gadkari, Gowda today held
a meeting with the state unit Party President K S Eswarappa, former Chief
Minister B S Yeddyurappa, senior ministers Jagadish Shettar and Govind Karjol
in the party office and decided to ask the three ministers to put in their
papers.
Savadi and Patil said they would submit their resignation to Gowda and request
him to accept it. Savadi and Patil, who had to demit the ministry under cloud,
blamed the media for blowing the incident out of proportion.