Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday said his government decided to withhold the bill mandating job reservation for Kannadigas in the private sector due to “certain confusion” and that it will be taken up for discussion in the next cabinet meeting to clear the doubts.
However, the central leadership of the Congress party has conveyed its displeasure to the Karnataka CM for trying to push the bill without consulting his senior colleagues in his council of ministers. The central leadership of the party, including the party’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge, who hails from Karnataka, was also not kept in the loop on the issue, Congress sources in the national capital said.
According to sources in the Congress, Siddaramaiah announced the withdrawal of the bill on Wednesday evening after the Congress’s central leadership, including Kharge, who was in Bengaluru, intervened. A Congress source termed the process of drafting and presenting the bill before the state cabinet on Monday as a “unilateral” effort by the Chief Minister’s Office and ministers close to him.
Congress sources, who did not wish to be named, claimed that most of the ministers in the Karnataka cabinet, including Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar and Commerce and Industries Minister MB Patil, conveyed to the central leadership that they came to know about the bill only when it was presented at the meeting of the state’s cabinet.
The episode has further highlighted the factionalism prevalent within the Congress party in Karnataka, which the central leadership had blamed for the party’s below-par performance in the state in the Lok Sabha polls. Sources claimed that the central leadership suspects that the bill was pushed through as a means to distract from issues such as the alleged ‘Valmiki scam’ that the Siddaramaiah government faces. The Congress leadership believes that the CM and his loyalists crossed a “Lakshman Rekha” in the manner they pushed through the bill.
The controversy over the bill not only gave the BJP an opportunity to criticise the government but also the Left Democratic Front government of Kerala and the Telugu Desam Party-run government in Andhra Pradesh to embarrass the Congress, party sources said. There were also apprehensions in the party that the state government’s move could hurt the Congress’s electoral prospects elsewhere in the country, especially in northern India.
Replying to Leader of the Opposition R Ashoka’s demand to clarify the state government’s stand on the bill, Siddaramaiah said in the Karnataka Assembly that a complete discussion on the bill could not take place during Monday’s cabinet meeting. He said that by then, reports had appeared in the media, and there was confusion on the issue. “We will clear those confusions in the next cabinet meeting. Let’s have a detailed discussion,” Siddaramaiah said.
The state cabinet had on Monday cleared the Karnataka State Employment of Local Candidates in the Industries, Factories and Other Establishments Bill, 2024, which makes it compulsory for private firms to reserve jobs for Kannadigas. BJP’s Ashoka pointed out that the CM changed his message on ‘X’ thrice, from first announcing that the cabinet has decided on 100 per cent reservation for Kannadigas in the private sector and then deleted it. The CM later posted another message saying that there will be 50 per cent reservation in the management category and 70 per cent in the non-management category for Kannadigas.
“Finally, you announced putting the bill on hold. There appears to be a Tughlaq government in Karnataka,” Ashoka said. In his reply, the CM said, “There is no Tughlaq government, but Siddaramaiah government. We will take up the bill in the next cabinet meeting.”
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress won nine of Karnataka’s 28 seats, an underwhelming performance that the central leadership attributed to the factionalism in the party.
First Published: Jul 18 2024 | 7:35 PM IST
