Ten new legislators — all defectors from the Congress and JD(S) who won bypolls on a BJP ticket — will be sworn in at Karnataka’s Raj Bhavan on Thursday, if a list of inductees sent by chief minister BS Yediyurappa to Governor Vajubhai Vala is any indication.
Seventeen members of legislative assembly, including 14 from the Congress and three from the Janata Dal (Secular), had resigned in July last year to help topple the 14-month-old coalition government headed by HD Kumaraswamy.
In the subsequent by-polls in December last year, 13 of the “defectors” had contested and 11 of them had won. The Bharatiya Janata Party had promised them that they would be inducted as ministers to reward their “sacrifice in enabling the formation of a party government in the state.”
The 10 who are being inducted are ST Somashekar, Ramesh Jarkiholi, Anand Singh, Byrathi Basvraja, Shivaram Hebbar, BC Patil, K Gopaliah, Narayana Gowda and Shrimant Patil.
The lone defector who won but is not being inducted is Mahesh Kumatahalli from Athani constituency. Laxman Savadi whom Kumatahalli had defeated in the 2018 assembly polls is a deputy chief minister and thus no additional representation.
With this cabinet expansion, the BJP seems to have for now tried to keep dissidence at bay by not inducting any of the ‘loyalist’ MLAs in the party.
There has been a fierce internal battle within the party on who among the loyalists should get inducted into the cabinet with several aspirants vying for the same.
After the expansion, the state cabinet strength goes up to 28 including the chief minister.
Karnataka can have a maximum of 34 ministers, which means there will be six vacancies in the cabinet yet.
