“Politically motivated”: Congress’ Priyank Kharge slams BJP over waqf notice row
The directive came after a high-level meeting involving senior officials from the Revenue Department, Minority Welfare Department, and the Waqf Board.
New Delhi: Siddaramaiah is the new Chief Minister of Karnataka and DK Shivakumar took oath as his deputy at the Kantaveera Stadium in Bengaluru today.
Other MLAs who took the oath of office are KH Muniyppa, KJ George, G Parameshwara, Priyank Kharge, Satish Laxman Rao Jarkiholi, Ramalinga Reddy, MB Patil and Zameer Ahmed.
Out of these eight ministers, G Parameshwara belongs to the SC community while Satish Laxman Rao Jarkiholi represents the ST community. Jarkiholi was also the Minister of Forest, Ecology and Environment, Government of Karnataka between the end of 2018 to 2019. Kharge (Junior) was the minister of Social Welfare. For G Parmeshwara, who was earlier the deputy CM of Karnataka and also the home minister it was sour grapes as he could not become the Deputy CM.
Advertisement
In all, Karnataka can have 34 ministers in the cabinet and they have already announced 10 names.
It is widely being believed that Karnataka swearing-in will set the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Besides Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the Congress had invitations to the Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah and Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren. Others who were invited include Uddhav Thackeray, Sitaram Yechury, Sharad Pawar, and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. Except Akhilesh all were present at the swearing-in.
Most of these leaders are trying to form a coalition to take the might of Bharatiya Janata Party and PM Narendra Modi.
Earlier in the day CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat took a dig at the Congress asking why the Kerala and the Telangana chief ministers were not invited for the swearing in ceremony, if the Congress really wanted to set the ball rolling for the 2024 LS polls.
Advertisement
