Upset BJP MLAs to CM: Will there be a rejig?

Shyam Sundar Vattam | NT Bengaluru

Pressure is mounting on Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to carry out the Cabinet expansion or reshuffle which has been getting postponed for one reason or the other in the last six months. A group of cabinet hopefuls are said to have met the CM and sought to know whether there would be a Cabinet rejig failing which they would have to take certain hard decisions in the coming months.

The reshuffle is being postponed since December last year for some reason. Earlier, it was postponed due to the biennial election to the Legislative Council from the local bodies, followed by the Covid-19 pandemic, budget session, Rajya Sabha polls and biennial election to the Council from the graduates’ and teachers’ constituencies.

The patience of aspirants is running out and they have urged the CM to ask BJP National President J.P. Nadda or Union Home Minister Amit Shah to give permission for the rejig. Bommai is learnt to have told them that he had already given a list of persons to be inducted and dropped from the Cabinet to the high command. Now the ball is in Nadda’s court and nothing can be done without his permission.

With hardly 10-11 months left for the 2023 Assembly elections, many senior MLAs wish to work as ministers but the BJP high command has not been responsive to their demand. Upset over this, a few lawmakers have decided to join the Congress Party early next year since the party has a chance of coming back to power.

Many of them are knocking on the doors of Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Siddaramaiah and KPCC President D.K.Shivakumar to induct them into the party. It may not be surprising if 8-10 BJP MLAs join the Congress Party upset over the BJP high command dragging its feet on the reshuffle. Party workers are equally unhappy since the current set of chairmen of various boards and corporations are still continuing and there is no hope of another set of workers taking over these posts. Those appointed by then Chief Minister B.S.Yediyurappa in 2019 are still running the sho running the
show and not ready to give way to others.

A senior leader said that if the high command seriously wants the BJP to retain power in Karnataka on the lines of Uttar Pradesh, then it must have a new cabinet with a mixture of the young and experienced or else it would be difficult for the party to return to power in 2023