Siddaramaiah elected Congress legislature party leader

BENGALURU: Siddaramaiah has been elected as the Congress legislature party leader to ensure that he functions as the leader of Opposition at the trust vote to be taken by Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on Saturday. After the legislature party meeting in Hyderabad, a Congress MLA told ET: “A direction has come from Congress president Rahul Gandhi that Siddaramaiah should be given the role keeping in mind the trust vote.

Currently, we are the Opposition and he will lead our efforts on Saturday.” Party sources said if the trust vote was defeated and a coalition government was formed under JDS’ H D Kumaraswamy, the CLP leader would most likely be changed as Siddaramaiah would not want to be deputy chief minister in such an arrangement. “We will deal with that when we come to that situation. We are focussed fully on the trust vote now,” another MLA added.

The party is worried that a re-run of the Tamil Nadu assembly chaos in February 2011 may take place in the Karnataka one on Saturday. The trust vote that Tamil Nadu CM E Palaniswamy won saw the Speaker deciding by voice vote even as all the opposition members were evicted from the House. “Our priority now is to ensure that nothing of that sort happens and division of votes takes place properly,” a senior MLA told ET.