PTI

Bangalore, Jul 19: A cloud of uncertainty hangs over the transfer of power by JD(S) to ruling partner BJP in Karnataka, with barely less than three months left for Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy to demit office as per the power sharing pact between the two parties.

Mixed signals emerging from JD(S), heading the coalition, and squabbles within BJP have added fuel to speculations over transfer of power in October. Chief minister H D Kumaraswamy has repeatedly declared he would handover power to Deputy Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, saying he was not vacillating but his ministerial colleagues have been singing different tunes.

"My mind is very clear. I am not vacillating", Kumaraswamy told PTI, adding he was "mentally prepared" to hand over the baton to Yediyurappa, who is waiting in the wings.

But, Minister for Labour and Wakf Iqbal Ansari, who first raised doubts on power transfer, has been speaking off and on ruling out transfer of power to BJP, with another loyalist minister of Kumaraswamy, D T Jayakumar going a step further, saying Yediyurappa was "incompetent" to run the government.

Staging a lightning political coup in January 2006, Kumaraswamy, a first time MLA and son of JD(S) supremo H D Devegowda, had dumped the Congress, his party's then coalition partner, and courted BJP to form a government.

At the time, JDS and BJP had agreed to share the remaining tenure of 40 months with each ruling for 20 months. Even months ahead of power transfer BJP was at the receiving end of pinpricks, but it has given the impression of being unprovoked, maintaining silence apparently as a matter of strategy.