Ahead of the 2023 Assembly polls, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday approved the much-awaited Karnataka Cabinet expansion plan to accommodate disgruntled BJP MLAs such as KS Eshwarappa and Ramesh Jarkiholi.
With a sharp focus on Karnataka, the BJP’s only gate to other south Indian States, Shah will depute 10 Central Ministers in the State in its 10 zones to monitor the campaign for the Assembly polls which are five months away.
The BJP is targeting 150 of total 224 seats and his green signal for the Cabinet changes is aimed to settle disgruntled voices and unify the party .
Former Ministers Eshwarappa and Jarkiholi have demanded that they be reinducted into the cabinet. Eshwarappa was forced to resign as panchayat raj minister in April 2022 after an FIR was registered against him over the suicide of a civil contractor.
Incidentally, the suicide by another contractor, given multi-crore contracts in the State, did the rounds on Saturday.
Jarkiholi resigned as water resources minister in March 2021 after a sleaze tape was leaked to news TV channels. A special investigation team, however, gave a clean chit to Jarkiholi in February, after which he has met several top BJP leaders to ensure that he is inducted again. Shah chaired a key meeting with booth level workers in Karnataka to discuss the required grassroots level preparations for the Assembly elections with Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Home Minister Araga Jnanendra, BJP General Secretary and State in-charge Arun Singh national general secretary BL Santhosh, and national secretary CT Ravi in attendance.
Shah is already in campaign mode in Southern Karnataka’s Mandya region dominated by the JD(S) and the Congress saying that the BJP will go alone in the poll and win it with a majority. Accusing the JD(S) of spreading rumours claiming that BJP will tie up with them, while addressing party workers here, he said, “I have come to tell the workers and the people of Karnataka that we will not go with any party. We will fight alone and form the Government on our own.”
Union Home Minister described the Congress and JD(S) as “communal, casteist and criminal” at a rally in Mandya. The BJP is trying to make inroads into the districts of the region which has a large Vokkaliga population and has traditionally been dominated by the JD(S) and the Congress.
The ruling party got its maiden victory in the region only in 2019, when a JD(S) leader switched sides to join them. Mandya has seven Assembly seats —six with the JD(S) and one with the BJP, which it won in a by-poll. The region consists of districts like Mandya, Mysuru, Hassan, Tumakuru, Chamarajanagar, Bengaluru Rural, Kolar, and Chikkaballapur, among others.
In addition to the party’s Hindutva pitch , Shah also hit out at the Congress, saying Siddaramaiah, who served as the Chief Minister of the State from 2013 to 2018, withdrew cases against the now-banned Islamist outfit Popular Front of India. It was only after BJP came in power in the State that PFI was banned, and its leaders arrested, he said.
