NEW DELHI: Both the people and the political leaders are unhappy, say experts.
In order to reduce unemployment among Karnataka locals, the Congress Chief Minister of the state Siddaramaiah had planned to introduce a bill that would reserve a certain percentage of jobs for Kannadigas. However, after the state government faced mounting pressure, the bill has since been put on hold. It was initially slated for introduction in the Assembly on Thursday.
Earlier last week, the Karnataka state Cabinet had approved the “Karnataka State Employment of Local Candidates in Industries, Factories, and Other Establishments Bill, 2024,” which would require private companies to reserve a certain percentage of jobs for Kannadigas. However, the bill faced considerable opposition from industry stakeholders, including NASSCOM, which warned that such regulations would prompt companies to relocate outside of Karnataka.
According to political analysts in the state, the whole episode is symptomatic of the “complete mismanagement of governance”, proving that the people are unhappy with the functioning of the Congress government. It was because of this that CM was trying to do some kind of balancing act by reserving jobs for locals but it backfired majorly.
According to Union Steel Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, the Congress government took the decision to bring the quota bill to divert public attention from the MUDA and Valmiki Corporation scams. Top political leaders in the state also believe that the Karnataka economy is not in full control of the government, because of which Siddaramaiah sought to take measures that could boost the job market temporarily.
Worse, Sidaramaiah’s Congress colleague, Shashi Tharoor, MP, questioned the rationale behind bringing the controversial bill. He said, “I don’t know what Karnataka thought of it, on what basis?” He added, “That (the bill) was not a wise decision. If every state brings such a law, it would be unconstitutional. The Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to live, work, and travel freely in any part of the country.”
The economic condition of Karnataka, according to a top leader holding a Constitutional position in state, is very poor. The government does not have sufficient funds to fulfil its election promises, which it had made in the name of guarantee schemes before winning the Assembly elections. It also does not have sufficient money to run the government smoothly. The top leader added, “Government hasn’t been able to fulfil its election promises because there is no money to take the guarantee schemes to the people. When we were expecting numbers in double digits in the parliamentary elections, we got just 9 Lok Sabha seats. That is because of the hollow promises the state leadership had made. Those low numbers were a reflection of our performance at the policy-level.”
Moreover, after Congress’ three-member fact-finding team comprising Madhusudan Mistry, Gaurav Gogoi and Hibi Eden visited the state recently to analyse what went wrong in the Lok Sabha elections, it found deep rooted resentment over the irregular functioning of the party unit and governance in the state. A source privy to the assessments made in the committee’s report said, “The top leaders had individually confided about different matters indicating that a huge section of Congress leaders were fed up and confused. The majority view of the leaders was that they were not happy either with the functioning of the party or with the functioning of the government.”