The Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to make appointments to the boards and corporations soon after the legislature session to accommodate party workers ahead of Assembly elections and to pacify disappointed legislators who could not make it to the Cabinet.
There are nearly 85 boards and corporations in the State. Fifty to fifty-five of them — which have political significance — were filled up long ago.
Now, the party is thinking of making fresh appointments to around 45 of these prominent boards. “We want to retain the board chiefs who are going to contest the forthcoming Assembly polls and remove others, to make way for fresh appointments,” sources said.
Meanwhile, the dissidence by the disappointed ministerial aspirants is building up. Some of the MLAs from this camp, who as a group, are pressurising the party to heed to their demands, are learnt to have threatened to embarrass the government by abstaining from the legislature session.
They have decided to meet on July 18, under the leadership of the former Minister G. Karunakara Reddy, to finalise their strategy of bringing pressure on the party leadership to drop MLCs from the Ministry to make way for them.
Though the party is concerned about these developments, it has decided against dropping anyone from the Ministry.
It hopes to douse the dissidence through consultations and assurance of constituency development, sources said.
But the party is concerned about Haladi Srinivasa Shetty, Kundapur MLA, rebelling against it after he failed to make it to the Ministry. As mediations by the party leaders have failed, Mr. Shetty has declared that he will quit as MLA.
What has worried the party is that some of the dissident MLAs are said to be in touch with the Janata Dal (Secular), which is trying to capitalise on the problems within the BJP.
It is learnt that the party preferred Kota Srinivasa Poojary, MLC, an Idiga, to Mr. Shetty for the ministerial berth in view of the forthcoming elections. The party felt that Mr. Poojary’s inclusion would help its candidates in the five constituencies of coastal and Malnad region that has a sizeable Idiga population.
It was also a strategic move, as by including Mr. Poojary, the party shut the doors on another ministerial aspirant, Belur Gopalakrishna, who is also an Idiga. Interestingly, the former Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa is learnt to have bargained hard and managed to get his close confidant B.J. Puttaswamy, MLC, into the Ministry, while Mr. Gopalakrishna, who was a prominent member of his shouting brigade, was left in the lurch.
This his made Mr. Gopalakrishna rebel against Mr. Yeddyurappa.
This was evident on Monday when he demanded that Mr. Yeddyurappa’s political opponent and former Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda be appointed as State president.
