AICC general secretary RS Surjewala has asked senior ministers in Karnataka to be prepared to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections if the need arose as part of a broad strategy to give a tough challenge to the BJP and unseat it in most seats.
Surjewala, who is also the AICC in charge of the party affairs in the state, shared his views in a meeting with a group of seven ministers in Bengaluru on Monday. He gave the example of Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda, who contested the 2009 LS polls from Benglauru South and lost by a margin of about 37,000 votes after giving a tough fight to the BJP.
Home Minister G Parameshwara, in a chat with the media on Tuesday, said the ministers suggested to the AICC leader to sanction more posts of DyCM in view of the benefits such a move would bring electorally. The Congress has assigned one minister each to 28 constituencies to organise the cadre to take on the BJP. The saffron party has aligned with the JD(S), and the two parties will soon finalise a seat sharing.
The AICC has called the 28 ministers to Delhi on January 11 to discuss candidate selection and hear their assessment about the party’s strengths and weaknesses in their constituencies and candidates they think would win. The leaders will share names of candidates with a potential to win, Parameshwara said, adding that they would urge the party to finalise the names fast.
There are speculations that the Congress may field a bunch of ministers with proven electoral track record in their respective districts as the party has targeted to win 20 seats in the state. The party is said to be weighing on the names of ministers N Chaluvarayaswamy (Mandya), Ramalinga Reddy (Bengaluru South), RB Thimmapur (Vijayapura), Satish Jarkiholi (Belagavi), HC Mahadevappa (Chamarajanagar) and KJ George (Bengaluru Central).Ministers HC Mahadevappa, Dinesh Gundu Rao, KN Rajanna, Satish Jarakiholi, MB Patil, KH Muniyappa and Parameshwara were part of the meeting with Surjewala. Interestingly, most of these ministers held a dinner meeting in Bengaluru last week to press the party leadership to approve new Dy CM positions for Lingayat, Dalits and minorities, arguing that such a strategy would win over votes of these communities.Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president DK Shivakumar is the only deputy CM now, and chief minister Siddaramaiah consults him before taking any important decisions. Any new Dy CM position, party sources say, would undermine his clout in the government.
The AICC leader agreed to discuss the subject with the party leadership, Parameshwara said, while adding that the purpose of the meeting, however, was not to discuss the Dy CM posts. The party, sources said, is likely to weigh on the demand seriously since it has come from a group of ministers, and not individually.
The Congress is keen on fielding ministers as it does not have formidable candidates in many seats, sources said.
In the 2019 LS polls, the BJP won 25 out of 28 seats, leaving one seat each for the JDS and Congress. Former actor Sumalatha Ambareesh won the Mandya seat as an independent candidate with the BJP’s backing.
With the LS polls coming in less than a year after the government formation, many ministers are said to be reluctant to take the plunge as they want to remain in the state politics.
The previous BJP regime too, under the then Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa had three Deputy CMs – Laxman Savadi, CN Ashwath Narayan and Govind Karjol, representing the Lingayat, Vokkaliga and SC communities as the party assumed the community voters would back the party in elections. Yediyurappa’s successor Basavaraj Bommai, however, did not have a Deputy CM.