BENGALURU/ KOLAR: The Congress suffered a big jolt on Wednesday with the rift over the party’s candidate for Kolar LS seat reaching Vidhana Soudha. High drama prevailed there as five Congress legislators of former speaker Ramesh Kumar faction threatened to resign if the party selected food and civil supplies minister KH Muniyappa’s son-in-law Chikkapeddanna for the seat. Higher education minister Dr MC Sudhakar too was among them.
The JDS-BJP alliance is likely to take advantage of this opportunity as Muniyappa hails from the SC (left) community, which has a large number of voters in the old Mysuru region. It may even reach out to Chikkapeddanna, according to sources. After learning that the party high command has decided to choose Chikkapeddanna for Kolar, the Congress MLAs, including Dr Sudhakar, K Y Nanje Gowda and Kotturu Majunath, and MLCs Nazeer Ahmed and Anil Kumar rushed to the chambers of the Speaker and Council chairman to submit their resignation letters.
As Speaker UT Khader was in Mangaluru, the legislators even tried to book a flight to meet him to submit their resignation letters, the sources said.
Nazeer and Anil met Council chairman Basavaraj Horatti at his chamber and informed him about their decision.
Meanwhile, Kolar district in-charge minister Byrati Suresh rushed to Vidhana Soudha and promised the disgruntled legislators that the issue will be resolved by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and DCM DK Shivakumar once they returned from their tour of Mysuru and coastal Karnataka, respectively. “They came with signed papers but did not hand them over to me,” Horatti told reporters when asked whether the MLCs misused his position for political reasons.
“There is opposition (to the candidature of Muniyappa’s son-in-law who hails from the SC-left category). The legislators from Kolar want a candidate from the SC-right category for the seat,” said Siddaramaiah, admitting to dissidence in the Kolar Congress unit.
‘Tolerated all this for party’
Even Bangarpet MLA SN Narayanaswamy is also against giving the seat to Muniyappa’s family members. Muniyappa’s daughter Roopkala Shashidhar is KGF MLA. “We are fed up. We can no longer be the slaves of Muniyappa’s family,” said Dr Sudhakar.
“They (Ramesh Kumar faction) have created this SC right-left division. They (high command) inducted those who defeated me in the 2019 LS polls into the party and even gave tickets to them in the Assembly polls. I tolerated all this for the sake of the party,” Muniyappa told reporters.
He asserted that he is fighting for the just share as a representative of one of the largest SC communities. Only one of the five seats reserved for SCs has been given. Whereas the SC right community has been given three seats. “I met AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge and put forth my argument for proper representations to SC left, right, Bhovi and Lambanis as the party used to do earlier,” he said.