MLA and Chief Minister's Political Secretary M P Renukacharya said that BJP leader Basanagouda Patil Yatnal's remark about a Rs 2,500-crore offer for the chief minister's post has embarrassed Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and the party's leaders at the Centre.
Renukacharya said on Saturday that former Union Minister Yatnal should stop making such controversial statements in public. "I don't know why he spoke like that," he said. "Minister's or chief minister's posts are not for sale in the BJP and it is not possible to get any post in the party by lobbying for the same. Money culture is not in the BJP but in the Congress."
On Cabinet expansion, Renukacharya said the chief minister and the party high command would take a call on which MLAs and MLCs would be part of it. "We have no role in it," he said.
Slamming JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy, he said that the former chief minister was known for a hit-and-run attitude and was an expert at firing shots in the air. "Instead of saying that the Bommai-led government will collapse soon, he must prove it," he said.
On the Congress leaders' calls for the resignation of Home Minister Aaraga Jnanendra and Higher Education Minister C N Ashwath Narayan in connection with the PSI recruitment scam, Renukacharya said, "KPCC President D K Shivakumar and Leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly Siddaramaiah have no moral right to demand the resignation of BJP leaders. How many ministers quit their posts when they were in power in Karnataka? None of them did. So, they must stop demanding it."