In Karnataka, Congress struggles to douse dissidence fire, disgruntled leaders to meet on June 13

BENGALURU: The dissidence that erupted in Congress soon after the ministry expansion on Wednesday is now threatening to snowball into a major crisis, worrying the party leadership. Leaders who were denied a berth are openly criticising the party leadership for “ignoring their seniority and service to the party”.

Lingayat strongman and former minister M B Patil is emerging as the leader of a group of dissidents. Since Thursday morning, several meetings were held at Patil’s Sadashivanagar residence.  Patil and other disgruntled party leaders like Satish Jarkiholi, Roshan Baig, Hoskote MLA M T B Nagaraj and Chikkaballapur MLA Sudhakar K held discussions to decide on their future course of action.

An upset Patil said, “My pride is hurt.  I won’t accept a berth now because I am not a second class citizen.”  And Sudhakar said the coalition government won’t last more than three months.Apart from keeping these MLAs out of the ministry, the party high command has also ignored the demand to make one of the leaders from north Karnataka the Deputy Chief Minister. Satish Jarkiholi insisted that the group was not agitated against the party, but were feeling let down.

Meanwhile, Patil and other dissidents are expected to meet again on June 13 to chalk out their future course of action.AICC general secretary in-charge for Karnataka K C Venugopal said, “We acknowledge that there is disappointment among our legislators but we will sort things out soon. It is a difficult task, but we are monitoring the situation and assure our legislators of our support. We have six more berths vacant and more will be accommodated.”While the unhappy group held meetings during the first half of the day, the second half involved visits to Patil’s residence by prominent party leaders to douse the dissidence fire.

Cong leaders try to pacify unhappy group

Leaders like KPCC working president Dinesh Gundu Rao, newly sworn-in ministers Krishna Byregowda and Zameer Ahmed, and MLC Rizwan Arshad tried to persuade the unhappy group to relent. But Patil and other dissidents are expected to meet again on June 13 to chalk out their future course of action.Two other MLAs — Eshwar Khandre and B C Patil associated with prominent Veerashaiva leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa — are also dissatisfied over their omission in the ministry.

The Congress bosses had initially tasked former CM Siddaramaiah to quell the dissidence, but he is now on a tour of Badami, his constituency in north Karnataka.  Even as Congress leaders continued to mollify the different groups of leaders and MLAs, party workers staged  protests in different parts of the state. While demonstrations by supporters of Ramalinga Reddy, Roshan Baig, Challakere MLA T Raghumurthy and Bhadravathi MLA Sangemeshwar B K were held in front of the KPCC office here, protests were also held in Belagavi, Vijayapura and Hubballi against the alleged injustice to their leaders.Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara said that opportunity will be provided to the disgruntled leaders in the future, as cabinet ministers will be assessed and changed based on their performance.