Karnataka: 14 rebel Congress lawmakers disqualified

Bangalore : 14 rebel Congress lawmakers, responsible for bringing down the coalition government in Karnataka, have been disqualified from the party on Tuesday.

The decision from the party came days after they were disqualified from the state legislature. KR Ramesh Kumar had disqualified 11 Congress legislators -- Pratap Gowda Patil, B C Patil, Shivram Hebbar, S T Somashekar, Byrati Basavaraj, Anand Singh, Roshan Baig, Munirathna, K Sudhakar and MTB Nagaraj and Shrimant Patil -- on Sunday.

HD Kumaraswamy-led former Karnataka government failed to reach the majority mark during trust vote on last Tuesday. Both the Congress and Kumaraswamy had promised a stringent action against the rebel MLAs.

In the trust vote in the state assembly, the coalition could scrape up only 99 votes. The BJP touched the majority mark with 105 votes and formed a new government with BS Yediyurappa as chief minister on Thursday.

Congress's Siddaramaiah had then tweeted, "I would like to reaffirm that those who have fallen for Operation Kamala will never be inducted back to our party".