After cabinet reshuffle, has Siddaramaiah shot himself in the foot?

Ministry reshuffles are, invariably, messy affairs. But, the reshuffle effected in Karnataka by chief minister Siddaramaiah appears to be getting messier. Worse still is that there are no clear indicators as to how far this mess can reach and create problems for the Congress party in the only major state under its control after the May disaster in Assam and Kerala.

The chief minister has been smart enough to get two members of the legislature party — Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa and Ramesh Kumar — into the ministry to avoid pinpricks on the floor of the assembly. He has also bought peace with leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjuna Kharge by inducting his son, Priyank, into the ministry. But, the problem he faces is from some of the 14 he has dropped from the ministry on grounds of bad performance.

The surprising aspect in this exercise, undertaken to bolster the image of the government two years before the next election, has been that the Congress high command has not behaved like the “low command” after the May debacle. It very sternly put its foot down and told the chief minister that consensus among the top state leadership was a prerequisite for Sonia Gandhi to approve the reshuffle plan.

Siddaramaiah had, obviously, felt emboldened enough to think that her approval would be received in a jiffy once he presented his plan. After all, he had got the party an extra third seat in the Rajya Sabha with the help of rebel Janata Dal (S) members when just two seats were expected in the biennial elections about a week earlier. Senior Congressmen are not sure what response would have been forthcoming from the high command if the matter was handled by vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

“Her handling of the situation is distinctively different,” said one senior leader who did not want to be identified, “He very smartly consulted Kharge and a couple of others to go back and tell her that there was consensus on the reshuffle. But, the high command had also told him that it was his responsibility to manage the aftermath of the reshuffle as there is always some heartburn after such an exercise.”

Clearly, the signal from the high command was not clearly read by the chief minister. The point about consensus from the high command was meant to cover all aspects of the reshuffle. It obviously meant that he should also speak to those whom he plans to drop from the ministry. Speaking at  the meeting of the Council of Ministers and saying that “there may be people who will be dropped. You should not think it is a reflection on your work” was not adequate.

Siddaramaiah appears to have simply sent the list of ministers to be dropped from the ministry to the Raj Bhavan and gone ahead with the reshuffle. As supporters of those inducted into the ministry celebrated, supporters of those dropped and aspirants indulged in arson and violence. The chief minister, perhaps, forgot an old lesson from mentors like Ramakrishna Hegde and HD Deve Gowda to avoid dissidence, mollycoddling.

In terms of performance, there is no doubt that those dropped belong to the categories ranging from no, bad and terrible performance. “But, he seems to have forgotten that even a joker among them enjoys enormous political support in his community as well as in his constituency. There were ways to cajole him and not make him into a dissident,” said another senior leader who is a friend-turned-foe of Siddaramaiah.

The strange part is that Siddaramaiah did not bother speaking to those ministers who did not attend, by design or otherwise, the Council of Ministers meeting called before the reshuffle. One of them is an old friend of Siddaramaiah and a senior Dalit leader, V Srinivasa Prasad. A veteran Congress man who had shifted once to even serve in the Vajpayee ministry. Prasad, incidentally, is the man who brought Siddaramaiah onto the Ahinda ( Kannada euphemism for the Dalit, OBC and Muslim platform that catapulted Siddaramaiah to a backward classes leader).

Prasad’s grouse is a simple one. “I am not upset over my being dropped from the cabinet. What has upset me is that Siddaramaiah and Kharge had come to me with a begging bowl on the eve of the 2008 Assembly elections asking me to join the Congress. They have exhibited their opportunism. They never took me into confidence and told me that I would be dropped from the ministry.’’

Prasad is important for the party for more reasons than one. He commands considerable influence among the Dalits in the two Parliamentary constituencies of Mysuru and Chamarajanagar. If the Dalits join hands either with the major caste group of Vokkaligas in one constituency and the Lingayats in the other constituency, the combination becomes an indomitable force.

It is a similar situation that exists in the coastal district of Mangaluru where Vinay Kumar Sorake has been dropped. Sorake belongs to the Idiga community (toddy-tappers community). The community here would not be appeased by the induction of Kagodu Thimmappa because he belongs to Shivamogga district. It’s a similar situation in the predominantly Muslim constituency of Gulbarga, where its representative Qamarul Islam has been dropped. Again, in the Vokkaliga dominated Mandya district, actor Ambareesh has threatened to teach a lesson to those who conspired against him .

Political parties invariably wait for the things to settle down before adding fuel to the fire of another party. It is, perhaps, a reflection of the times that the district level leaders from the Janata Dal (S) and the Bharatiya Janata Party have already got into the act to express sympathies with the disgruntled Congress partymen. For the JDS, it is an opportunity to settle scores for the defeat in their candidate in the Rajya Sabha election. For the BJP, its preparations began when BS Yeddyurappa became the party president.

These aren’t the only problems that Siddaramaiah currently faces. It is well-known that Kagodu Thimmappa and Ramesh Kumar are leaders who will not stop the pinpricks once in the ministry. As one of them was told by a former Union minister on a congratulatory call: “With you in the ministry, my best wishes are with the chief minister”.