from the primary membership of the party for six years on charges of anti-party activities.BJP’s central disciplinary committee member-secretary Om Pathak, in separate letters to the MLAs, said they also stood removed if they held any party position.

Somashekar and Hebbar represent Yeshwantpur (Bengaluru) and Yellapur (Uttara Kannada) in the assembly. They are among the 17 MLAs who switched their loyalties from the Congress in July 2019 and helped Yediyurappa overthrow the JD (S)-Congress coalition regime led by HD Kumaraswamy and form a BJP government. The two later served as ministers both under Yediyurappa and Basavaraj Bommai.

The BJP, as Pathak mentioned in his letter, took serious note of their “repeated violations of the party discipline. The party leaders had accused them of openly defying the party, voting against the party’s official candidate in the Rajya Sabha polls and campaigning for Congress candidates in the Lok Sabha election.

They went on to contest the assembly polls in May 2023 on BJP tickets, defying speculation, but their relationship with the party soured after that.

The BJP’s Karnataka core committee, which met under the leadership of national general secretary Radha Mohan Das Agrawal and state president BY Vijayendra in December, had favoured expulsion of the two MLAs.