The Akhil Bharat Lingayat Panchamasali Trust and Panchamsali Jagadguru Mahapeetha, Kudalasangam, have urged Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to induct MLAs belonging to the Panchamasali community in the Cabinet.
Welcoming Mr. Siddaramaiah’s decision to allocate Cabinet berths based on principles of social justice, the seer of the Panchamasali Jagadguru Mahapeetha, Basava Jaya Mrutyunjaya Swami, said that he would appeal to Mr. Siddaramaiah to include at least two MLAs belonging to the community in the Cabinet.
Addressing presspersons here on Tuesday, he said there were around 80 lakh people belonging to the Panchamasali community in the State.
“One of the main reasons for the community’s backwardness is inadequate representation in various fields,” the swami said.
He said that Bijapur, Bagalkot and undivided Dharwad district (comprising Dharwad, Haveri and Gadag) was home to 64 per cent of the Panchamasali community. At present, there were four Congress MLAs belonging to the Panchamasali community — Shvanand Patil, Vijayanand Kasheppanavar, Vinay Kulkarni and Prakash Hukkeriare.
The swami said that representation would help in addressing the problems of the community.
Congress leader Neelakanth Asuti said that representation was needed to bring about socio-economic change.
Panchamasali community leaders, including Shivanand Bellad, Mailari Dharwad, Nandakumar Patil, Prabhakar Bidnal, Kumar Karadanahalli and Satish Patil, said their only demand was representation in the Cabinet.
