Post the severe drubbing in Lok Sabha poll, the simmering differences within Congress and Janata Dal (S) coalition in Karnataka have reached crisis proportions making the Congress rush senior party leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and AICC general secretary in-charge of the state KC Venugopal to Bengaluru to manage the situation and try and save the coalition government in the state.

There were reports that the State unit of the Congress party has convened a meeting of its Legislature Party on May 29.

The move came after reports that two Karnataka Congress MLAs, Ramesh Jharkiholi and K Sudhakar, met BJP leader SM Krishna on Sunday at his residence.

Jharkiholi and Sudhakar are among the seven-eight MLAs identified in the Congress as being opposed to JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy continuing as the Chief Minister of Karnataka.

The duo was among the six Congress MLAs who had travelled to Mumbai in February, allegedly at the behest of the BJP and its state chief BS Yeddyurappa, in an attempt to topple the coalition government.

Having registered a massive win in the Lok Sabha polls — a clear majority at the Centre and 25 out of 28 seats in Karnataka — the BJP was expected to revive efforts to topple the Kumaraswamy government using the already identified rebels.

Following the drubbing of the Congress-JD(S) combine in the just-concluded Lok Sabha election, where the two parties managed to win only one seat each in Karnataka, a senior Congress leader has claimed that the State government will collapse after June 10.

BJP state unit chief BS Yeddyurappa last week claimed to have numbers to topple coalition government and form a BJP government in the state again.

Yesterday, former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah asserted that the JD(S)-Congress government was a “strong” one and ridiculed Yeddyurappa for repeatedly claiming that the coalition would collapse.

Since the coalition took over on May 23, 2018, the BJP has tried to woo over a dozen coalition MLAs in order to reduce the alliance to a minority and stake claim to form a government.

The BJP, with 105 members, is the single-largest party in the 225-member Karnataka Assembly. The ruling coalition has 117 members — 79 of the Congress, 37 of the JD(S) and one of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).