Putting an end to the confusion over the Higher Education portfolio, Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Wednesday announced that he would keep the portfolio with him. He also termed the Higher Education Department as one of the “extremely” corrupt departments.
His announcement comes in the light of Chamundeshwari MLA G.T. Deve Gowda sulking over the allocation of the portfolio and he had also expressed his unwillingness to accept it.
On Wednesday, Mr. Gowda, who had sought change in portfolio, even stayed away from a crucial meeting on fee fixation for engineering courses.
The Chief Minister after the fee fixation meeting said he would keep the portfolio “till he remained the Chief Minister”. He, however, had earlier said he would keep the portfolio for a brief period till the Cabinet was expanded.
But later speaking on the sidelines, he changed his stand and said he would keep the portfolio as it was one of the departments that was “extremely” corrupt. “Higher Education is a very vast department and needs someone to concentrate on it. I too have knowledge of the department and I can handle it,” he said.
Janata Darshan is taxing, time consuming, says CM
With hundreds of anxious people lining up to meet the Chief Minister every day, receiving memorandums and hearing grievances has been taxing for him.
On Wednesday, at a press conference here, he acknowledged that Janata Darshan was taxing as well as time consuming. “If I keep meeting so many people, when will I have time to run the administration?” he said.
Responding to a question on why several cases from district centres are coming before him, Mr. Kumaraswamy said there were several issues that cannot be sorted out at the district administration level.
“So far, several cases of people with problems pertaining to paying school fee or those seeking employment have come before me. People are also not willing to wait and they come with a hope that I will solve the problem,” he said.
He said so far he had met more than 5,000 people individually and taken memorandums.
“Each day, I meet about 100 people in the morning near my residence and about 100 in my office,” he said.
