Karnataka rejig: Congress quells dissent

By going ahead with the Cabinet expansion on Saturday, the JDS-Congress coalition regime in Karnataka, especially the Congress, has hit many birds with a single stone. The way it has picked new faces has not only addressed caste imbalances, but also quelled voices of dissent in the North Karnataka region.

Out of the eight new faces inducted into the six-month old ministry, seven are from North Karnataka. And, barring MB Patil, a Lingayat, all the other new ministers are from SC/ST, Kuruba and Muslim communities. Former chief minister Siddaramaiah, who heads the JDS Congress coordination committee, has demonstrated his political craftsmanship in the latest expansion, and his stamp of Ahinda (minorities, backward classes and Dalits) is evident in the choice of the new ministers.

The Congress has called the bluff of Belgaum strongman Ramesh Jharakiholi by boldly dropping him from the cabinet. He was not only suspected to have close links with the BJP, but was also skipping cabinet meetings. His party bosses always found it difficult to defend his chronic absenteeism from cabinet meetings while media hurled queries at them. State Congress president Dinesh Gundu Rao has cited this as the reason for dropping him. There are rumours that he might quit the party.


The Congress had been postponing the cabinet expansion on one pretext or the other fearing rebellion from MLAs and threats to the government’s survival. But no such thing looks likely in the near future. The way the Congress has carried out the task has doused any hopes of an imminent comeback in the BJP. “There are 79 MLAs in the Congress, and more than 60 of them have been accommodated with posts in the cabinet, in government as parliamentary secretaries, in boards and corporations and in the party hierarchy as working president and campaign committee chairman,” said S Mahadeva Prakash, a political analyst.