Bengaluru, Feb 3: A wave of dissatisfaction has hit the six-month-old BJP government against the backdrop of ChiefMinister B S Yediyurappa's announcement to induct 13 aspirants in the second cabinet expansion on February 6.
In the first cabinet expansion, the Chief Minister had inducted 17 ministers on August 20, 2019.
Among the 13, ten will be those defectors from Congress and the JD(S) who were disqualified earlier and won the assembly by-election in December last year.
The rest will be the 'native BJP leaders', as DeputyChief Minister Govind Karjol put it.
Speculations are rife that Mahadevapura MLA Arvind Limbavali, Hukkeri MLA Umesh Katti and C P Yogeshwar, who had lost to H D Kumaraswamy from Channapatna assembly segment, would be inducted.
If Yogeshwar is included in the cabinet then he will be the second minister after Deputy Chief Minister Laxman Savadi who had lost and yet made it to the cabinet.
The possible induction of Yogeshwar and Savadi, who was made Deputy Chief Minister despite losing the Assembly elections, are also a "reason" for discontent in the BJP.
Hectic activities began in the power corridor and MLAs started forming groups to impress upon the Chief Minister to include their members in the ministry.
While one group was from the "Kalyana Karnataka" region, the others were the defectors who will be excluded in the cabinet expansion.
A few MLAs from 'Kalyana Karnataka' region or erstwhileHyderabad-Karnataka region comprising six districts, met at the Legislature Home and held a meeting.
The meeting was led by Shorapur MLA Narasimha Nayak aka Raju Gouda and Honnalli MLA M P Renukacharya.
The MLAs of theKalyana Karnataka region were unanimous that their backward region should get representation in the cabinet.
Later, Gouda met the Chief Minister and requested that their region be given adequate representation in the cabinet, which is lacking development.
Talking to reporters, Gouda said, "We had given representations to all the MPs, MLAs and the Chief Minister.
Today also we all had a meeting and later called on the Chief Minister requesting him to make any MLA from our region a minister."
He said any imbalance in cabinet expansion will cause trouble to the MLAs from Kalyana Karnataka region.
"If you make the defeated candidates ministers then include 120 people in the cabinet," an aggrieved Gouda taunted.
Renukacharya too echoed the same sentiments.
"If you give preference to the defeated candidates then what will happen to those who won the election? Where should the winners of the election go? We emphasise upon giving preference to the winners."
On the other hand, the defectors who jumped the Congress and the JD(S) ship and helped form the BJP government too had a meeting in Bengaluru, said BJP sources.
They were unanimous that not only the 11 MLAs who won the election be made ministers but also A H Vishwanath and M T BNagaraj who had unsuccessfully contested the assembly by- polls from Hunasuru and Hoskote on a BJP ticket.
Vishwanath, who was quite vocal on Sunday for dropping his name, was mellowed down on Monday after meeting Yediyurappa.
However, his insistence for getting a cabinet berth remained intact.
"I did not make any proposal before him and will not do itin future because he (Yediyurappa) knows what has to be done,"Vishwanath told reporters after meeting the Chief Minister.
When he was reminded of Yediyurappa's statement that there were legal complications in making him a minister, Vishwanathsaid, "This government has legal experts and the advocate general. They will speak."
Amid speculations that Athani MLA Mahesh Kumathalli maynot get a cabinet berth in the reshuffle, the defected MLAsled by Gokak BJP MLA Ramesh Jarkiholi, had a meeting to decide their future strategy, said party sources.
Currently, there are 18 ministers, including the chief minister, in the cabinet, which has a sanctioned strength of 34. Sixteen berths are vacant.
The cabinet expansion exercise will be a delicate task for Yediyurappa as he has to ensure adequate representation for various castes and regions.
The ministry already has eight Lingayats, including Yediyurappa; three Vokkaligas; a Brahmin; three SCs, two OBCs and one ST.
Opposition parties have been critical of the BJP and Yediyurappa over the delay in the cabinet expansion, alleging he is weak and his administration has collapsed.
Reacting to the cabinet expansion, former Chief MinisterSiddaramaiah quipped, "A drama is taking place. Let it happen on February 6. Afterwards we will see what all happens."
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New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday said the Opposition is protesting for the right to vote for every Indian and demanded a "clean and pure" voter list, asserting that the issue of alleged irregularities pointed out by him will "explode" soon as it is not related to a single constituency but the whole country.
Indicating that he would not submit a signed affidavit as sought by the Election Commission, Gandhi asserted that the data analysed by the Congress to provide "proof" of "vote theft" is taken from the EC website.
"This is their data. It is not my data that I should sign. It is their data only and has been taken from their website. This is only a move to distract," he told reporters.
The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, who participated in a protest march by the opposition on the "vote theft" issue, said the Election Commission is "silent" as the truth is before the entire nation after his charge that over one lakh votes in an assembly constituency in Karnataka were found to be fake in a research conducted by his party.
"Another thing I want to tell is that this has not just happened in Bangalore, but in different constituencies across the country, and the Election Commission knows this. The EC knows that this data will explode. What it is trying to control and hide, we will bring it out, and it will explode. The EC knows this," he told reporters.
Gandhi was briefly detained along with others as police stopped the protest march by opposition MPs from Parliament House to the EC office.
"They (EC) cannot talk as the truth is before the entire nation," the Congress leader said as he was being taken away in a bus by the police.
"This fight is not political, but for saving the Constitution," he asserted.
This fight is for 'one man, one vote' and we want a clean, pure voter list," the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha added.
He said all the MPs of the INDIA alliance were stopped and taken into custody when they were going to meet the Election Commission.
"The truth of 'vote theft' is now before the country. This fight is not political; it is a fight to protect democracy, the Constitution, and the right to ‘one person, one vote’.
"The united opposition and every voter in the country demand a clean and transparent voter list. And, we will secure this right at all costs," Gandhi claimed in a post on X later.
Gandhi had on Thursday cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over 1 lakh votes were "stolen" through five types of manipulation in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka. He alleged there were 11,965 duplicate voters, 40,009 with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single-address voters, 4,132 voters with invalid photos and 33,692 voters misusing Form 6 of new voters.