Pressure is mounting on Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and KPCC president G. Parameshwara to drop Minister of State for Infrastructure Santosh Lad from the Cabinet for the alleged involvement of his company in the mining scam in Bellary district.
The latest to demand his resignation is freedom fighter H.S. Doreswamy, who wrote to the Chief Minister urging him to drop Mr. Lad from the Cabinet until his company is cleared of the charges. Recalling Mr. Siddaramaiah’s refusal to budge on the issue, Mr. Doreswamy, instrumental in seeing that the former KPCC working president and MLA D.K. Shivakumar was not inducted into the Cabinet for his alleged involvement in illegal mining, said he had no objection in re-inducting Mr. Lad, when the court clears him. Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader and former MLA G.V. Srirama Reddy also questioned the propriety of continuing with Mr. Lad in the government. He criticised Mr. Siddaramaiah for not sticking to his promise that corrupt MLAs would not be inducted into his ministry. The Chief Minister is bound to drop him on moral grounds, he said, but doubted whether he would do it.