The Supreme Court bench of Justices A K Sikri, SA Bobde and Ashok Bhusan on Friday (May 18) decided that there should be a floor test to decide which is the party that gets to rule Karnataka after Governor Vajubhai Vala on Wednesday (May 16) at 9pm decided at9pm to call the largest party (the BJP with 104 MLAs) to form the government and B. S. Yeddyurappa took oath 12 hours later. The floor test will be held tomorrow around 4pm.

At 10.30am on Friday Attorney General K K Venugopal made his his submission that he brought the letters. The copy was being served to other parties.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatagi, said that he has the support of the majority. The second letter was about invitation to the party with the largest mandate.

The letter was read out.

Justice Sikri said: “They have signed the letter and submitted it. There are two parts: one part there is this party which has the majority, and the other is the governor recommending somebody. So on what basis did the governor take the decision?” He said that the main objective is who enters the arena first.

Rohatagi said he has instructions that this letter was not given to the governor. It was some other letter.

Justice Sikri said that it was a simple numbers game: Who has the majority will form the government.

He then went onto the second part, which is the post-poll alliance: “two parties who are contesting against each other and join each other after the poll. But if a party has the majority then it has the right to form the government.”

Justice Sikri further said: “There are two coordinates: first whether act of the governor was right and the second is, we can have floor test.”

–  India Legal Bureau