TUMAKURU: It seems that Congress heavyweights have drawn the battlelines for supremacy, with SC leaders KH Muniyappa and Dr G Parameshwara said to be keen to wean their community from AHINDA (acronym for Minorities, Backward Classes and Dalits), launched by former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
If the recent meeting of the trio -- Muniyappa, Parameshwara and former national general secretary B K Hariprasad -- is any indication, they may approach AICC president Sonia Gandhi, seeking her nod for a SC convention some time before the next assembly elections.
Siddaramaiah, who got wind of this meeting, managed to get hold of SC leader and former minister H C Mahadevappa, who was also originally with the JDS, and they are now planning an AHINDA convention before the SC convention. These AHINDA conventions had catapulted Siddaramaiah to the status of mass leader, as not just Kurubas, but even minorities and SCs had rallied behind him in 2013.
With then KPCC president Parameshwara losing miserably from Koratagere, it became that much more easy for Siddaramaiah to become Chief Minister. KPCC president D K Shivakumar had then played sympathiser, and reportedly said that Parameshwara was still in the race for CM’s post.
Now, with Siddarmaiah’s supporters making a claim once again for the CM’s post, Shivakumar and other ‘original Congress’ leaders have got together to thwart it. Evidently, former KPCC president Dinesh Gundurao had also called on Parameshwara at the latter’s house in Bengaluru. “We exchanged pleasantries and also discussed the current political situation,” he declared on Twitter, sending a clear signal to the ‘migrants’ who had followed Siddaramaiah into the Congress. According to sources, Parameshwara is planning to call on Sonia Gandhi shortly with a report.