New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has urged President Pratibha Patil to sack Karnataka Governor HR Bhardwaj, saying he was biased against the state government.
"The party has demanded that he should be recalled immediately," BJP leader Arun Jaitley told reporters on Wednesday after a delegation of BJP leaders met the president at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here.
The BJP has taken an aggressive stand against the governor ever since he recommended President's Rule in Karnataka after a vote of confidence in the state assembly ended in bedlam on Monday.
The governor has since asked Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa to take another confidence vote on Thursday. The chief minister has agreed.
Jaitley said that Bhardwaj 'has failed to politically detach himself from his (Congress) past. He has used extra-constitutional powers... as a strategy'. This, he said, was also Bhardwaj's old style of working.
The BJP accused the governor, a former Congress leader, of indulging in public spat with BJP ministers in the state and making complaints against them to the Election Commission.
"The Raj Bhavan in Karnataka has become an epi-centre (of state politics) in order to destabilize the state government," Jaitley said.
BJP leader Arun Jaitley claims 'Raj Bhavan in Karnataka has become an epi-centre (of state politics) in order to destabilize state government.'