No LoP because of BJP infighting, Shivakumar tells BSY

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar on Thursday hit back against former CM BS Yediyurappa over allegations of poor governance.

The BJP leader had also claimed that there was factionalism within the Congress. To this, Shivakumar said that infighting was so bad within the saffron party that it wasn’t even able to appoint a Leader of the Opposition (LOP).

“There is no infighting in the Congress party. It is the BJP which is suffering from infighting. This is why they haven’t been able to appoint an LOP,” Shivakumar told mediapersons.

“There is no fighting in our ranks. BJP leaders are issuing these statements to cover up their own failures. They are trying to hand out chocolates to our MLAs,” he added, referring to alleged attempts by the BJP to bribe Congress MLAs to engineer defections and topple the government.

Yediyurappa had said that Congress leaders had been fighting among themselves like “dogs and foxes.”

The BJP leader also denied attempts at executing Operation Kamala, a euphemism for poaching of ruling MLAs.

Vokkaligas wary of caste census

Shivakumar had made the comments at the sidelines of the meeting of Rajya Vokkaligara Sangha, which reportedly discussed the community’s opposition to the disclosure of the Kantharaju Commission, a report that studied socio-economic conditions of the castes and communities across the state.

Apart from Shivakumar, the meeting was attended by Vokkaliga pontiff of the Adichunchunagiri mutt Niramalandanatha Swamy, other seers of the community, BJP MLAs CN Ashwath Narayan and ST Somasekhar, Agriculture Minister N Chaluvaraya Swamy and other political leaders of note from the community.

The Kantharaju Commission report was constituted in April 2015 during Siddaramaiah’s first term under Karnataka State Backward Classes Commission (KSBCC) Chairperson H Kantharaj for Rs 162 crore.

Alleged leaks from the report seem to suggest that the two m dominant communities – Lingayats and Vokkaligas – were now outnumbered by Dalits and Muslims, both communities with fewer resources and political heft.

This has led many Lingayats and Vokkaligas to oppose the disclosure and implementation of the report, which may recommend increasing the quota share of the more populous groups.