This meeting was deferred twice but this time with dissenting voices in the state, the meeting has become inevitable.
BENGALURU
A viral video that showed senior Congress functionary B.K. Hariprasad stating that he knows how to make someone chief minister and how to remove, and that these days, he is seeing a trend of supressing backward class leaders, has raised many eyebrows. His comments come from the fact that he was left out of the Siddaramaiah cabinet and a sulking Hariprasad has not let opportunity go to air his grievance.
If this was not enough embarrassment for the newly formed Congress government, a signature campaign by Congress legislatures on a letter addressed to Siddaramaiah accusing over a dozen ministers ignoring MLAs’ plea prompted the CM and Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar to call for an out of turn legislature party meeting last Thursday as a confidence-building measure. Though the Opposition unity meet of INDIA alliance leaders was quite a success, the above developments just after the event has now led the Congress high command to call for a meeting of the entire cabinet, the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister, in Delhi on 2 August. Sources said this meeting was scheduled twice, but deferred as Rahul Gandhi was not available.
The meeting is aimed at keeping a check on the ministers and government at large, as any dissent will get amplified at the national level at a time when Congress is trying to portray as a credible Opposition to the BJP with an eye on the 2024 general elections. The last 75 days of the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government has been quite eventful.
While on the one hand, the party is riding high having claimed implementing the guarantee schemes, internal dissent has been simmering from the word go with as many as a dozen senior leaders missing from the cabinet. Even during the recently concluded budget session, many of these leaders took pot shots at their own government.
B.K. Hariprasad, R.V. Deshpande, T.B. Jayachandra, M. Krishnappa, Basavaraj Rayareddy are among the top Congress leaders who are warming the benches though they have been around for four decades and are active and part of legislature have openly expressed displeasure over getting dropped. Add to this the confusion over power sharing agreement between Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar of 30 months each. While seniors who are privy to these developments agree in private, some staunch followers of Siddaramaiah, including ministers M.B. Patil, claimed that the current CM will continue for five full years, prompting the DKS camp to hit back.
With all these political developments, it was time to rein in indiscipline and send a strong message to leaders and cadre that any political manoeuvring that damages the party prospects will not be taken lightly.
The 2 August meeting will be important as this is the first one among those that are to follow, given the frequent showdown and shadow boxing in its state unit.