Jagadish Shettar, the Yeddyurappa loyalist and rual development minister, is all set to become the new chief minister of Karnataka.
The decision to replace the current incumbent D.V. Sadananda Gowda with Shettar was taken at the BJP's core committee meeting on Saturday.
Sadananda Gowda is expected to resign later in the evening. Moreover, Gowda has left for New Delhi amid speculation after the party high-command made such a request.
The BJP's core group met in New Delhi to quell the rising voices of dissent against Gowda with Yeddy faction mounting a scathing attack on the chief minister.
"My party high command has called me to Delhi. I am leaving today," said Gowda, for whose scalp the rebels led by former chief minister Yeddyurappa have been pressing for.
BJP sources said the party's Parliamentary Board was expected to deliberate on the Karnataka crisis on Saturday evening to hammer out a solution.
However, Gowda, who fell out with the Yeddyurappa camp, has pleaded with the party that it should not take any decision in 'haste' and sought to assert that he has strived to give a corruption-free administration in the last 11 months, after he was appointed as chief minister.
Gowda took over from Yeddyurappa in August last year after BJP high command axed him in the wake of allegations of corruption against him.
Yeddyurappa, who propelled Gowda as his successor then, has been demanding for his ouster now and wants to install Rural Development Minister Jagadish Shettar, also a Lingayat, as chief minister.
In the event of BJP opting for change of guard, the political history witnessed in Karnataka from 1989 to 1994 of having three chief ministers in a span of five years would repeat.
Congress, which returned to power with a massive mandate in the state, replaced Veerendra Patil with S. Bangarappa.
Veerappa Moily replaced Bangarappa following heightened dissidence against him.
In the assembly polls held in 1994, Janata Dal trounced Congress.