Ministry reshuffle, Siddaramaiah sacks 14, inducts 13

Bengaluru, Jun 19, 2016, (PTI): In a major rejig, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today dropped 14 ministers and inducted 13 members into his Council of Ministers in a bid to give a face-lift to his three-year old government.

 

With the reshuffle, the ministry has a strength of 33, one less than the upper constitutional limit.

 

In the long awaited revamp, nine cabinet rank ministers and four ministers of state were sworn in, a day after the Congress High Command gave the nod to Siddaramaiah who is under pressure to rejuvenate the administration with Assembly polls two years away.

 

The reshuffle expectedly gave rise to rumblings of discontent with axed ministers openly voicing unhappiness and their supporters turning violent and several ministerial aspirant MLAs threatening to quit their Assembly membership.

 

Ahead of the swearing in, 14 ministers were shown the door on grounds of non-performance or being controversial with the Chief Minister recommending their sacking to Governor Vajubhai Vala who accepted it with immediate effect.

 

Tanveer Sait, Kagodu Thimmappa, Ramesh Kumar, Basavaraj Raya Reddy, H Y Meti, S S Mallikarjun, M R Seetharam, Santosh Lad and Ramesh Jarkiholi were inducted as cabinet rank ministers by the Governor at a ceremony at Raj Bhavan.

 

Priyank Kharge, Rudrappa Lamani, Eshwar Khandre and Pramod Madhwaraj were sworn in as Ministers of State.

 

Thimmappa and Ramesh Kumar are former Assembly Speakers, while Kharge is the son of Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge.

 

The ministers who faced the axe are: Qamarul Islam, Shamanoor Shivashankarappa, V Srinivasa Prasad, M H Ambareesh, Vinay Kumar Sorake, Satish Jarkiholi, Baburao Chinchansoor, Shivaraj Sangappa Tangadagi, S R Patil, Manohar Tahasildhar, K Abayachandra Jain, Dinesh Gundu Rao, Kimmane Ratnakar and P T Parameshwar Naik.

 

Naik had landed in trouble recently after Deputy Superintendent of Police of Kudligi in Ballari district Anupama Shenoy had resigned her post upset over his alleged interference in her work, embarrassing the government.

 

Ambareesh, Srinivasa Prasad and Islam made no secret of their displeasure over being dropped.

 

Cine-actor turned politician Ambareesh’s supporters blocked the Bengaluru-Mysuru Highway in Mandya district, while Islam’s followers went on a rampage at Kalaburgi, pelting stones and resorting to road blockade.

 

A bus was also set on fire near Saradagi in Kalaburgi district during a protest allegedly by supporters of Mallikayya Guttedar over he being denied a ministerial berth.

 

Several Congress MLAs from Bengaluru were also unhappy over being excluded from the ministry, with S T Somashekar claiming that eight legislators were contemplating resigning their Assembly membership in protest.

 

"We will resign 100 per cent," he said, questioning a "first timer like Kharge" being made a minister while neglecting their claims.

 

However, Siddaramaih maintained that there was no dissent among party members.

 

"No dissidence in the party. Totally, there is no dissidence in the party," he told reporters after the post-swearing in customary meeting of the council of ministers.

 

Siddaramaiah is performing the surgery and undertaking reshuffle more than three years after assuming office on may 13, 2013 and after deferring it for reasons ranging from drought to elections to local bodies, Legislative Council and Rajya Sabha.

 

In the reshuffle, Siddarmaiah has tried to balance caste and region factors and blend experience and young blood.

 

Facing an aggressive BJP, the exercise is coming in order to put the party on a sound footing two years before the Assembly elections in Karnataka, the only major state where the Congress is ruling after being ejected out of power in Kerala and Assam in the recent polls.