The Supreme Court will give its order to end Karnataka’s political crisis tomorrow

• The total count of state government’s rebel legislators is currently at 15 after a defector returned to the ruling coalition.
  
• The southern state, home to India’s Silicon Valley Bengaluru, has been plunged into a political crisis into its second month now.
  
• The JDS-Congress coalition led by Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy is one side of the battle for control and the BJP is on the other.
  

Bengaluru, famous as India’s Silicon Valley, has been in the news for almost a month for an ugly political drama that has put governance on pause in the state of Karnataka. All eyes are now on the country’s highest court, which is expected to end the impasse with its verdict tomorrow (July 17).

At the heart of the crisis is a battle for control over one of the country’s economically more prosperous states, with the ruling JDS-Congress coalition on one side and the BJP on the other.

16 legislators rebelled against the ruling coalition on July 6, bringing to question whether Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy had enough numbers to remain in power. One of those 16 has now returned into the Congress-JDS fold, leaving the number of rebels at 15, a day before the Supreme Court verdict.

The question in front of the Supreme Court is whether these resignations should be accepted by the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, who had decided that the rebellion was unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition party in Karnataka, has claimed that the existing government should be dissolved because it does not have the required number of legislators backing it in the assembly.

"This government is in a minority and that's simple math," senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, the former Attorney General of India between 2014 to 2017 who is now representing the rebel legislators, told the court.

Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy has offered to take a floor test to prove his strength and the trust vote will now take place on July 18.