BENGALURU: Ever since the MUDA case broke out, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah appears to have changed his demeanour, and is willing to fulfil the wishes of his loyalists and cabinet colleagues. Holding a cabinet meeting in Kalaburagi is testimony to this.
“It is the advice of Kalyana Karnataka leaders, especially RDPR Minister Priyank Kharge, that prompted Siddaramaiah to decide on holding the cabinet meeting, which is likely to clear hefty proposals for the region’s development,” a Congress leader said. While conceding to the demands of his cabinet colleagues, he is also projecting himself as unperturbed by the MUDA case, he added.
On August 22, DCM and Bengaluru Development Minister DK Shivakumar got the tunnel road project Underground Vehicular Tunnel in Twin Tube Mode worth Rs 12,690 crore, cleared by the cabinet. On August 1, a meeting of the Council of ministers, chaired by Shivakumar in the absence of Siddaramaiah, had passed a resolution advising Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot to withdraw the show cause notice issued to Siddaramaiah in the MUDA case. Following the advice of his loyalists, Siddaramaiah inspected Bengaluru city on September 12, in the absence of Shivakumar, who is on a trip to the US. With the Karnataka High Court hearing the MUDA case, he was eager to send out a message of nonchalance, say political analysts.
Siddaramaiah is also under pressure from some leaders within the party who have been pushing for classification of the Scheduled Caste (SC) quota to the cabinet, after the Supreme Court’s judgment on August 1, 2024, that state governments can take a call on the classification of the quota. The cabinet may discuss the issue but is unlikely to come to a conclusion, a source told The New Indian Express.
Interestingly, the social welfare department has proposed to implement the decision of the Basavaraj Bommai cabinet on March 24, 2023, which suggested classification of 17 per cent quota among the four groups carved out of 101 castes within the SC category, and suggested 6 per cent for SC (Left), 5.5 per cent for SC (Right), 4.5 per cent for Bhovis, Lambanis, Koracha, Korama etc, and 1 per cent for others in proportion to their population.