Bengaluru: More than two weeks have passed since JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy was sworn-in as Chief Minister of Karnataka, amid much fanfare and the presence of galaxy of opposition political leaders from across the country, but it now seems that challenges before him in running the government smoothly are getting too difficult for him to handle it.
After several rounds of talks with senior Congress leadership in New Delhi and Bengaluru, Kumaraswami finally got a 25-member cabinet with 15 from the Congress and 10 from the JD(S) taking oath as ministers on Wednesday.Immediately after this development, dissidence in both JD(S) and the Congress camp started rearing its ugly head.
Several heavyweights of the previous Siddaramaiah government who were looking for berths in the H D Kumaraswami government were given the boot. R Roshan Baig, M B Patil, Ramalinga Reddy, H K Patil and Tanveer Sait were dropped, triggering protests from their followers.
To see that these leaders don’t rock the newly formed JD(S)-Congress government in the state, the Congress has rushed to senior state leaders to mollify the angry Congress MLAs.
Of the 15 Congress ministers, seven are new faces.
But fire is out in the JD(S) camp too. Six JD(S) MLAs have become ministers for the first time. This has enraged senior JD(S) leaders. Supporters of M C Manuguli, a JD(S) MLA, laid siege to former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda’s house on Wednesday.
In view of such developments, both the JD(S) and Congress have decided to keep some ministerial berths open. The JD(S) has decided to keep three berths open to accommodate three sulking MLAs, while the Congress has six berths to fill. Yet no one is sure that these pacifying moves would help the two parties which have come together to keep the BJP at bay from the state powers.
