Ahead of his swearing-in as the Karnataka’s new chief minister, Janata Dal-Secular leader H D Kumaraswamy on Monday evening met Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to finalise the modalities of government formation and ministerial berth sharing between the two post-poll allies.
According to sources, Congress has mooted two deputy chief ministers for the numerically strong party in order to strike a balance with the JD-S but the regional party is believed to be not in favour of this proposal.
Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee chief G Parameshwara is among the frontrunners for the deputy chief minister’s post.
Kumaraswamy, who will be sworn-in as chief minister on Wednesday for the second time in 12 years, flew into the capital on Monday afternoon and began his engagements with a meeting with pre-poll ally Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati. BSP bagged one seat.
During his 20-minute meeting with Sonia and Rahul, the Congress president, Kumaraswamy is understood to have discussed the nitty-gritty of cabinet formation on the number of ministerial berths the Congress and the JD-S would get.
The meeting took place at Rahul’s Tughlak Lane residence.
“There is no bargain. We will cordially work out things. We must work together. I am here to take their (Congress leaders’) advice,” said Kumaraswamy when asked by newsmen ahead of the meeting how the Congress and the JD-S will address the issue of ministry formation.
“We are going to give a stable government. All these issues are not yet discussed. We have not discussed any future course of action,” he said.
After the meeting, Kumaraswamy told reporters he had invited both Sonia and Rahul for the swearing-in ceremony in Bengaluru and they have agreed to come.
K C Venugopal, AICC in-charge of Karnataka, was also present at the meeting. Kumaraswamy is expected to take the floor test within 24 hours after being sworn-in.
Both Congress and JD-S MLAs will remain confined to their hotels till the floor test, according to reports from Bengaluru.
Kumaraswamy was invited by Governor Vajubhai Vala to take the reins of power after the three-day Bharatiya Janata Party government collapsed last Saturday with B S Yeddyurappa, unable to muster the required number for a majority, stepping down as the chief minister without facing the floor test in the state assembly.
The May 12 Karnataka assembly polls threw up a hung verdict with the BJP emerging as the single largest party with 104 seats.
The Congress was next with 78 and the JD-S followed with 37. The BSP has one MLA and two seats went to Independents.
Meanwhile, at an event in Bengaluru, Parameshwara said difficult times were ahead, but there was a need to stop the BJP from coming to power in the southern state.
He said he understood the sentiments of many who were averse to a tie-up between the Congress and JD-S.
However, the need to keep communal forces away from power made the Congress lend support to JD-S, Parameshwara said.
“I do understand the sentiments of many people that we should not have gone with the JD-S. But there was a need to stop the BJP from coming to power again in Karnataka. Keeping this in mind, our seniors took a decision to support the JD-S. We all must accept their decision,” he said.
“We may see difficult times ahead. We are visualising the challenges ahead, but we need to bear all the hardship to build a strong party,” the KPCC chief said.
IMAGES: JD-S leader and Karnataka chief minister-designate H D Kumaraswamy meets former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi at the latter’s residence in New Delhi on Monday. Photographs: Manvender Vashist/PTI Photo
The Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha on Monday moved the Supreme Court seeking quashing of Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala’s decision to invite Kumaraswamy to form government, alleging that post-poll alliance of Congress-JD-S was a ‘fraud’ on the electorate.
On May 19, the apex court had ordered live telecast of the crucial floor test in the Karnataka Assembly to ensure ‘transparency’ and later that evening, Yeddyurappa had resigned without facing the trust vote on the floor of the House.
The Hindu outfit, in a plea filed through ABHM general secretary Munna Kumar Sharma, has sought quashing of the Governor’s decision to appoint Kumaraswamy as the chief minister.
The plea, filed through lawyer Barun Kumar Sinha, has sought a declaration that the post-poll Congress-JD-S alliance is a ‘fraud on the electorate and violative of the Constitution … whereby electorate have been misled and deceived by both the political parties’.
‘Such fraudulent, opportunist, collusive, tactics between these two political parties have defrauded the electorate of the state of Karnataka which is against the basic structure of the Constitution of India,’ the plea said.
The plea has claimed that the governor was bound to consider the concept of popular government in a parliamentary democratic system and the ‘opportunistic post-poll coalition has to be disregarded by the governor keeping in view the people’s will’.
‘A political party which has no mandate of the people of Karnataka to form popular government, cannot stake claim with support of another political party who has also been voted out of power by the people of Karnataka,’ it said.
Source: Rediff