Siddaramaiah gears up for major Karnataka cabinet reshuffle

Bengaluru: Radical departures from status quo could prove costly in politics. But Congress-run Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah is in no mood for conventional thinking. He is expected to sack almost half of the ministers in his state government on Sunday.

After marathon meetings with senior Congress leaders including Sonia Gandhi over the past two days in New Delhi, and winning a nod to press ahead with a cabinet reshuffle in the state, Siddaramaiah returned to Bengaluru on Saturday evening and sat down with a few state leaders of the party at the residence of Bengaluru development minister K.J. George.

During the meeting, names for replacements kept changing reportedly.

On Sunday, he will send the word out for 14 out of his 34 sitting ministers to submit their resignation. Their replacements will be asked to gather at 4pm at Rajbhavan.

But many are worried about its consequences.

Instead of making the government and the party more strong, it may have just intensified infighting within the Congress party, feels political experts.

“Given the intensity of Congress infighting, a reshuffle may leave more disgruntled and very few satisfied,” said Sandeep Shastri, a political analyst and pro-vice chancellor of Jain University.

The reshuffle, or at least its scale, was opposed by other senior leaders such as Mallikarjun Kharge and others, but Siddaramaiah stuck to his stand of going for “a major surgery”, said a Congress legislator who was privy to the discussions. “Those who are left out are not happy and they will not be so silent about it,” he said.

There is a lot at stake for the grand old party in Karnataka. It is the only state where the Congress is in power in the South, as well as the only relatively big state it is ruling across India. And the next assembly election in Karnataka is due in May 2018. The election could decide if BJP’s wish for a Congress-free Bharat will bear fruit even before the next general elections of 2019.

A minister who managed to retain his portfolio said on condition of anonymity that Siddaramaiah’s “major surgery” has another consequence.

“Some of the considerably well performing ministers are dropped,” he said. “It’s not a clear cut surgery based on just merit, this is sort of culmination of a movement in the party to accomodate several people’s ambitions for a ministerial berth. Some have been included based on caste or other social justice factors. Two of them, I could say for sure, are good for nothing,” he said.

Siddaramaiah was not immediately available for a comment.

Having a reshuffle to refurbish the administration is one thing, and it making an impact is another, thinks Narendra Pani, a political analyst and professor in the School of Social Sciences at the National Institute of Advanced Studies.

Some others felt the move was not powerful enough.

“While (this) reshuffle is long overdue, it may be coming too late in the day to positively impact government image,” said Sandeep Shastri.

Others agreed.

“Karnataka is directionless right now. The government needs a major, real surgery, not a cosmetic surgery,” said Sridhar Pabbisetty, chief executive of Namma Bengaluru Foundation, a citizen forum.