The Bhartiya Janata Party for the first time on Friday indicated that Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa will have to quit once the Lokayukt report reportedly against him is out.

The indication came officially from party spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy that "it is amusing to think that the responsible opposition party won't come back with adequate response that satisfies you" on a report from Justice Santosh Hegde "whom we hold in the highest esteem."

"However, we can't act when the report is still not in our hands. We have the highest regards for Justice Santosh Hegde and we go by his word to a leading daily that the report is still not complete as he is still giving dictations," Rudy affirmed at a BJP press briefing at the party headquarters here.

He said the party has taken on record Hegde's statement that drafting of the 5000-page report is over and it is being printed while he is still dictating concluding paragraphs and that he will submit it to the state's chief secretary.

Chiding the Congress jumping up and down to sack Yeddyurappa, Rudy said if one has to go by the media leaks of the report not yet released, it also indicts former Congress chief minister S M Krishna, who is now the external affairs minister, and the party must first ask Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to sack him.

The leaked report blames Yeddyurappa and other former chief ministers, including Krishna, getting "kickbacks" from the mining firms, including those run by Reddy brothers who are ministers in his government, as a part of "huge racket" to allow illegal extraction of iron ore.

Justice Hegde, a retired Supreme Court judge who is also part of the civil society group of Anna Hazare championing for an effecting Lokpal Bill, is reported to have expressed concern in the report over "a mafia like situation created with every official being involved."

Knowing well that the leadership can ill-afford to sideline him for ever as it is he who brought the party to power, Yeddyurappa is pushing for Shobha Karandlaje to be his successor as anyone else can reduce his bargaining power within the power. The leadership already has the taste of Yeddyurappa going to the extent of threatening to split the party in the state when he was asked to step down in the wake of a revolt in November 2009.

As part of the deal at that time to neutralise Bellary's Reddy brothers, he had dropped Shobha who was then the rural development minister. She was, however, brought back in the Cabinet last year as the energy minister and has been calling shots on behalf of the chief minister to show from where she gets the power.

Yeddyurappa's detractors are bound to protest at any attempt to put Shobha as the first woman chief minister of Karnataka as her elevation
would only mean he continues to ruled the state with she acting only as a dummy chief minister.

The other leader whom the party may consider for the chief minister's post is rural development minister Jagdish Snettar, a 4-time MLA from Hubli. His prime qualification is that he has a clean image and he belongs to the same community of Lingayats to which Yeddyurappa belongs. Lingayats are the majority community with an estimated 60 per cent of Karnataka's population.