After getting a free hand from the Congress high command, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah effected a major reshuffle in his three-year-old Ministry on Sunday by dropping 14 Ministers and inducting 13 new faces that included half-a-dozen wards of powerful Congress leaders.
Karnataka is the last bastion of the Congress and the 2018 Assembly polls are crucial for the party. In the reshuffle, the Chief Minister has tried to balance equations of caste and region.
However, the reshuffle brought out on the streets followers of the dropped Ministers, who include a Dalit leader from Mysuru V Srinivasa Prasad, MH Ambareesh, a Vokkaliga face from Mandya, and Qamarul Islam, a Muslim leader from north Karnataka.
Siddaramaiah had recently met Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Delhi to convince her about his decision to drop non-performing Ministers and to seek a free hand to perform a long-pending surgery of his Cabinet. After BS Yeddyurappa assumed office as State BJP chief, it is must for the Congress to strengthen the party to take on the BJP.
Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala administered the oath to newly-inducted members at the lawns of Raj Bhavan.
Eight MlAs and 1 MlC sworn in as Cabinet rank Ministers, while 4 took oath as Ministers of State at Raj Bhavan in the presence of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
The Ministers who faced the axe are Qamarul Islam, S Shivashankarappa, V Srinivasa Prasad, MH Ambareesh, Vinay Kumar Sorake, Satish Jarkiholi, Baburao Chinchansoor, Shivaraj Sangappa Tangadagi, SR Patil, Manohar Tahasildhar, K Abayachandra Jain, Dinesh Gundu Rao, Kimmane Ratnakar and PT Parameshwar Naik.
The new Cabinet Ministers are: Kogodu Timmappa (Sagar), Ramesh Kumar (Srinivaspura), Tanveer Sait (Narasimharaja), HY Meti (Bagalkot), Basavaraj Rayareddy (Yelburga), SS Mallikarjun (Davangere North), MR Seetharam, MlC (Bengaluru city), Santosh lad (Kalagatagi) and Jarkiholi Ramesh laxmanrao (Gokak). The Ministers of State are: Priyanka Kharge (Chittapur), Eshwara Khandre (Bhalki), Pramod Madhwaraj (Udupi) and Rudrappa lavani (Haveri).
This is the first major revamp of the Siddaramaiah Government in Karnataka. The exercise was supported by Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee chief G Parameshwara and Karnataka in-charge general secretary Digvijay Singh.
According to party sources, Ministers who were non-performers and who were hit by some controversy or the other were shown the door. This exercise was to inject “more dynamic members” into the Ministry.
Interestingly, the new Ministers included as many as six Ministers who are sons of prominent Congress party leaders and another a brother. They are Priyank Kharge, son of Congress Parliamentary Party leader Mallikarjun Kharge; SS Mallikarjun, son of outgoing Minister Shivashankarappa; Pramod Madhwaraj, son of senior party leader Manorama Madhwaraj; Tanvir Sait, son of late party leader and former Minister Aziz Sait; Ishwar Khandre, son of prominent leader from Bidar late Bheemanna Khandre and Ramesh Jarkiholi, brother of outgoing Minister Satish Jarkiholi.
Kagodu Thimmappa tendered his resignation as the Speaker of legislative Assembly and an order was immediately passed by the Government appointing Deputy Speaker Shivashankar Reddy as Protem Speaker of the lower House.