BS Yeddyurappa writes to BJP top brass on joining NDA

Bangalore: Former Karnataka Chief Minister and Karnataka Janata Party chief BS Yeddyurappa has written to the top BJP leadership, indicating his desire to join the National Democratic Alliance or NDA.

In a letter addressed to LK Advani, also the chairman of the NDA, Mr Yeddyurappa writes, "We... request you to consider us an alliance party of NDA and involve us in all the deliberations of NDA by inviting KJP to all the meetings." (Read full letter)

Mr Yeddyurappa shares an uneasy relationship with Mr Advani after the BJP patriarch openly asked him to quit as Chief Minister last year over illegal mining deals in Karnataka.

Sources said the 70-year-old leader, one of the tallest leaders of the powerful Lingayat community in his state, also met Subramanian Swamy, who recently merged his Janata Party with the BJP.

Mr Yeddyurappa, who quit the BJP in a huff last year to form his own outfit, is a known Narendra Modi loyalist.

After being named the BJP's presumptive Prime Minister last month, Mr Modi had hinted that "friends" like Mr Yeddyurappa should be brought back to the party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, due by May next year.

In May this year, Mr Yeddyurappa's party failed to make a mark of its own in the Karnataka Assembly polls but played spoilsport to the chances of the BJP, whose only government in south India crumbled leading to the resurrection of the Congress after a long hiatus.