BJP veteran BS Yediyurappa was sworn in as chief minister of Karnataka for a fourth time on Friday evening in Bengaluru, a sudden turn in the state’s long-running political drama that leaves him with a difficult task in managing the numbers.

The swearing-in

Governor Vajubhai Vala administered the oath to the 76-year-old at a short ceremony at Raj Bhavan. Yediyurappa, who is given credit for the BJP’s first-ever government in a southern state in 2008, took the oath alone. He replaced HD Kumaraswamy, three days after the Congress-JD(S) coalition lost a confidence motion when a large group of its MLAs rebelled.

The move came suddenly that morning, when he announced he would meet the Governor and hurried to Raj Bhavan, emerging with a letter inviting him to form the government. He told BJP workers that party president and Home Minister Amit Shah had called him that morning and told him to get ready to be sworn in. As he was already Leader of the Opposition, he said, no legislature party meeting was needed. His claim came a day after Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar disqualified three rebel MLAs. He has also altered the spelling of his name, which was earlier written Yeddyurappa.

First announcements

He said the Assembly would meet at 10am on Monday, July 29, for the confidence motion and the finance bill, and that the legislative council would begin sitting on July 30. After a cabinet meeting, he announced an additional Rs 4,000 for those covered by the Prime Minister’s Kisan Samman scheme, which currently provides Rs 6,000, and a waiver of weavers’ loans amounting to about Rs 100 crore. He promised there would be no politics of revenge and that he would take the opposition along.

The numbers

After the three disqualifications, the 225-member Assembly has 221 members, not counting the Speaker, putting the halfway mark at 111. The BJP has 106 with one Independent, the Congress 76 and the JD(S) 37, both figures including MLAs whose resignations or disqualification are still pending, along with one BSP member, one nominated member plus the Speaker, who can cast a deciding vote in a tie. Decisions on 14 more MLAs, three from the JD(S) and the others from the Congress, are pending. In Tuesday’s vote, 105 members opposed the confidence motion and 99 supported it, while 20 were absent. In his letter to the Governor, Yediyurappa said the BJP had 105 MLAs and was the largest party.

Senior BJP leaders said winning the trust vote, the possible by-elections and forming a ministry that balances party loyalists against rebel Congress-JD(S) legislators would all be difficult.

Reactions and past terms

In Delhi, BJP working president JP Nadda denied that his party had engineered defections, saying the coalition fell for internal reasons and that the BJP would give a stable government. Asked about Yediyurappa being over the party’s 75-year age limit for government posts, Nadda said he was the elected leader of the legislature party and the natural choice.

The Congress said the BJP lacked the numbers to stake a claim. Siddaramaiah said Karnataka had become the BJP’s “experimental lab” and asked which article of the Constitution let a governor install a party without a majority. The JD(S) called the Governor’s decision “anti-democratic”.

Yediyurappa first became chief minister in November 2007, but lasted only seven days when Kumaraswamy backed out of a power-sharing deal. He returned the following year after the BJP won power on its own, but stepped down in July 2011 after being indicted in an illegal mining case by N Santosh Hegde, the Lokayukta at the time. In May 2018, although the BJP emerged as the largest party in a hung Assembly, he resigned after about three days, unable to prove a majority, which opened the way for the Congress-JD(S) government.

See also: Bharatiya Janata Party | Political leaders

Originally published on 27 July 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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