Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa has resigned once again from his post – twice in little more than three years – amid rumors of his exit. With this, he has joined the overwhelming number of Karnataka Chief Ministers who resigned prior to their term’s completion. Only three Chief Ministers have completed their term in the office and all of them belong to Indian National Congress: S Nijalingappa (from 1962 to ’68 for almost 6 years), D Devaraja Urs (from 1972 to ’77) and Siddaramaiah (from 2013 to ’18).
The last Chief Minister before the unification of Mysore, Kadidal Manjappa, resigned from his post on October 31, 1956, a day before the unified state of Mysore was formed (the state of Mysore was renamed ‘Karnataka’ in 1973).
The first Chief Minister of unified Mysore S Nijalingappa resigned in 1958 after taking oath in 1956. He was again elected Chief Minister in 1962 where he would complete his tenure. SR Kanthi, the third Chief Minister of the unified state of Mysore, held the office for a very brief period of 98 days, before handing over the position to Nijalingappa. He would then become the Education Minister in Nijalingappa’s cabinet. The fifth CM Veerendra Patil took oath in 1968 and resigned in 1971.
D Devaraj Urs’s (under whose first term the state of Mysore was formally changed to Karnataka) second term started from 1978 and lasted till 1980. His tenure ended as he expressed his differences with the then PM Indira Gandhi and started his own faction, before Gandhi won the 1980 Lok Sabha elections and many of Urs’s MLAs fled back to the ‘I’ faction. He was replaced by R Gundu Rao who held the office from 1980 till ’83.
In the 1983 state elections, Janata Party became the single largest party and Ramakrishna Hegde became the first non-Congress Chief Minister of Karnataka. But after the poor performance of the party in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections, he resigned and sought for a fresh mandate for his government. An election was conducted in 1985 wherein, yet again, Janata Party emerged as the single largest party.
After Hegde resigned on moral grounds (following allegations of corruption) in 1988, SR Bommai took up the CM’s portfolio. However, his government was dismissed by the Governor in 1989 on grounds that the government had lost the majority. In the election that followed, Congress enjoyed a landslide victory and Veerendra Patil was elected the Chief Minister of the state. But within almost a year he suffered a stroke and was sacked by Rajiv Gandhi following the 1990 communal violence in the state. He was replaced by S Bangarappa, who was Chief Minister for two years, from 1990 till 1992. He, too, was replaced within two years by M Veerappa Moily who handled the portfolio for another two years.
In the subsequent Assembly elections in 1994, Janata Dal became the single largest party and the then state chief of Janata Dal HD Deve Gowda was sworn in as the Chief Minister. But he was later chosen for the Prime Minister’s post after the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, where no party had a majority and a mix of regional parties backed by Congress decided to form the government. The state was once again leader-less.
He was succeeded by JH Patel and the latter continued to be CM until the next election.
In the 2004 elections, Congress and JD(S) decided to form a government together and Congress leader Dharam Singh was chosen as the CM. Nevertheless, history continued to repeat when he had to resign following the defection in JD(S) and the fall of the fragile coalition government. JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy became the next head of the state in a coalition government formed between his party and BJP. The power-sharing agreement between the two parties was that Kumaraswamy would be CM for the first half, and a BJP leader, preferably Yediyurappa, would be the same for the latter half. But after initially agreeing to it, Kumaraswamy refused to relinquish power. The President’s rule followed but Kumaraswamy signalled that they would support BJP again, if JD(S) was properly compensated. Yediyurappa was sworn in as CM in 2007 but the discussions went nowhere and he had to resign in almost a week.
In the 2008 elections, BJP emerged as the single largest party and Yediyurappa became the CM yet again. But after the state Lokayukta indicted him for illegal profiteering, he had to resign in mid-2011 with pressure from the party’s central committee. The party chose DV Sadananda Gowda as his successor but due to internal rifts in the party, he resigned in 2012. He was succeeded by Jagadish Shettar and he held the office till 2013.
In the 2018 Lok Sabha elections, BJP was invited to form the government even though it fell short of the majority mark by eight seats. Yediyurappa was sworn in as CM in May 2018 but resigned within two days, citing inability to prove majority. Kumaraswamy decided to join hands with Congress, again, and was sworn in as CM later that month. Just like the first coalition, this government tumbled when 17 MLAs (14 from Congress and 3 from JD(S)) decided to submit their resignations. A trust vote was held in July 2019, where the government couldn’t prove majority. Following the gubernatorial process, Yediyurappa became the CM for the fourth time that lasted till 2021.