Congress Central leaders ask Karnataka Ministers to unite and stand by Chief Minister

As the Congress government is expecting Raj Bhavan to respond to a request for sanction of prosecution against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Central leaders were in Bengaluru on Sunday to confabulate with top government functionaries and send a message of unity in the Cabinet.

As the Congress government is expecting Raj Bhavan to respond to a request for sanction of prosecution against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Central leaders were in Bengaluru on Sunday to confabulate with top government functionaries and send a message of unity in the Cabinet.

AICC general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal and AICC general secretary in charge of Karnataka Randeep Singh Surjewala met Ministers apart from holding discussions with Mr. Siddaramaiah.

Their visit came less than a week after the party high command summoned Mr. Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar to discuss political developments in the State and party affairs. During the Delhi visit, the party functionaries had discussed the show-cause notice issued to the Chief Minister by the Governor on alleged irregularities in the distribution of sites by MUDA. Though the Chief Minister’s wife is a beneficiary of the 50:50 scheme envisaged for land losers, he has said that there has been no irregularities in it.

While the council of Ministers advised Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot to withdraw the notice and reject the request for sanction of prosecution last week, the party is expecting the Governor to act adversely in the next few days, party sources said.

Currently, the BJP and the JD(S) are taking out a padayatra from Bengaluru to Mysuru seeking resignation of the Chief Minister

“It is unfortunate that the Governor has become an instrument in a political conspiracy. We will not allow the conspiracy of the BJP-JD(S) to destabilise the Congress government to succeed. We have decided to fight this unitedly and we will explain facts to the people. The BJP brought down the Congress-JD(S) government in 2018 and it is targeting the Congress government again. To protect the family members of its leaders, the BJP and the JD(S) are targeting a democratically elected government,” Mr. Vengugopal told presspersons.

“Our government is being destabilised since our guarantee schemes have affected them politically. We have no issues if a legal recourse is sought on the allegations. Instead, it is not right to make repeated allegations against Mr. Siddaramaiah and to target him,” he said.