36 legislators and 39 Congress workers to be appointed to key positions in boards and corporations
Bengaluru (PTI): Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on Thursday said 36 legislators and 39 Congress workers will be appointed to key positions in state-run boards and corporations.
He said the list would be released "any moment".
"36 legislators and 39 party workers have been accommodated in the appointments to boards and corporations. The party leaders and workers have brought the party to power in the state and they have been rewarded suitably," Shivakumar, who is also Karnataka Congress unit president, told reporters here.
Meanwhile, he said a meeting of the party's Lok Sabha election committee would be held here on Friday.
"We will have the first round of meeting tomorrow. Jagadish Shettar and Laxman Savadi (who joined the Congress from the BJP before the Assembly elections in May last year) have also been invited to the meeting. District in-charge ministers have collected opinions from all the constituencies and it will be discussed in tomorrow's meeting," Shivakumar said.
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On some Ministers reportedly reluctant to contest the Lok Sabha elections, he said, "If the party wants, everyone has to contest, whether it is me or anyone else."
Shivakumar expressed confidence that the party would win at least 25 Lok Sabha seats of the total 28 in Karnataka.
Regarding the JD(S) joining the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, he said: "it is their wish".
"The last time we joined hands with JD(S), we were hopeful of winning a lot of seats but ended up with one seat each," Shivakumar noted.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 25 seats and the Congress and JD(S) one each. An independent backed by the BJP also emerged victorious.
On some BJP leaders' reported comments that the Congress would suffer a "setback" in the Lok Sabha elections for its stand on the Ram temple issue, he said, "There is Rama in (Chief Minister) Siddaramaiah and there is Shiva in Shivakumar. Faith is a private matter. I believe in all faiths. There should be 'dharma' in politics but there should not be any politics in 'dharma'."
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Governor's move an insult to assembly, will protest his unconstitutional action: CM Siddaramaiah
Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has criticised Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot for not skipping the Cabinet-approved address and reading his version of the address at the first joint session of the year, alleging that the move violated constitutional provisions and amounted to an insult to the elected legislature.
Karnataka Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot addressed the joint session of the state legislature on Thursday, but read only three lines of the government’s prepared speech before leaving the House. A day earlier, he had refused to address the session.
Speaking to reporters at Vidhana Soudha on Thursday on the Governor’s shortened address to both Houses of the legislature, he said, “As per the Constitution, it is the Governor’s duty to address the joint session held at the beginning of every year and when a new government is formed.”
He said that under Articles 176 and 163 of the Constitution, the Governor is required to read the address prepared by the Cabinet, a practice that has been followed since the Constitution came into force.
“By delivering a speech drafted by himself, the Governor had violated constitutional provisions and insulted the Assembly of elected representatives,” the Chief Minister alleged.
The Chief Minister highlighted that the Congress party and the state government would protest what he termed an unconstitutional act and that agitations had been planned across the state.
He alleged that the Governor had acted as the “puppet” of the Centre, accusing the Central government of using the Governor to deliver a different address to cover up its own failures, and said the Governor had not fulfilled his constitutional duty.
He further alleged that the Centre had repealed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and introduced a new scheme called ‘VB-G RAM G’, a move strongly opposed by the state government. He said the first step taken by the Centre was to remove Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the Act.
Recalling the Congress-led UPA government’s initiatives, Siddaramaiah said that during Manmohan Singh’s tenure as Prime Minister in 2005, landmark legislations such as the Right to Food, Right to Information, Right to Education and Right to Employment were implemented in line with constitutional principles.
He added that the employment guarantee programme, aimed at providing at least 100 days of work to the rural poor, continues to benefit Dalits, labourers, women and small farmers.
He claimed that under the Centre’s new Act, job security for beneficiaries had been weakened, particularly affecting women and Dalits, who together formed a large share of those employed under the earlier scheme. He said the previous law allowed small farmers to take up work on their own land and ensured employment throughout the year, which was the government’s responsibility.
Siddaramaiah alleged that under the new arrangement, poor workers would be required to work at locations decided by the Central government. He also pointed out that earlier, Gram Sabha’s and Panchayats had the authority to prepare employment action plans, but this decentralised decision-making process had been removed under the new Act.
