Another Karnataka CM goes down
9 July 2012 1:53 PM GMT
After a week of suspense, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday appointed B S Yeddyurappa - backed Jagadish Shettar as the next chief minister of Karnataka. This step of replacing D V Sadananda Gowda comes with just nine months left for the next assembly election in the state. The senior BJP leaders Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh will go to Bengaluru on Monday for the meeting of the party legislators and facilitate the change of guard.
'Sadananda Gowda offered to resign for the larger good of the party. The party has accepted his resignation. It has decided to make Jagadish Shettar the new chief minister,' said the BJP president Nitin Gadkari.
'Keeping in mind the future of Karnataka, we have decided to give the leadership to Shettar,' he added. Gowda echoed Gadkari: 'The verdict given by central leaders has been whole-heartedly accepted by me. I will be a loyal worker in the future as well. I will extend full cooperation to the new chief minister.'
Millennium Post was the first to break the story of the BJP leadership agreeing to replace Sadananda Gowda to make way for Jagdish Shettar. On 3 July, we had written about how Yeddyurappa struck a deal with his seniors. Read the first report here.
The BJP sources have said that the party is planning to move Gowda to the Rajya Sabha; however, he does not seem to be keen on it. With elections due in the next year, sources say that Gowda is bargaining for the state president's post. With the chief minister's post now going to a Lingayat, Gowda, a Vokkaliga, has argued that the position of the state party president should be given to a Vokkaliga in order to attract both communities to the party during the election.
The decision to replace Gowda was taken by the central leadership of the BJP, after Shettar along with eight other ministers had resigned from the state cabinet last week, demanding a change of guard.
'Sadananda Gowda offered to resign for the larger good of the party. The party has accepted his resignation. It has decided to make Jagadish Shettar the new chief minister,' said the BJP president Nitin Gadkari.
'Keeping in mind the future of Karnataka, we have decided to give the leadership to Shettar,' he added. Gowda echoed Gadkari: 'The verdict given by central leaders has been whole-heartedly accepted by me. I will be a loyal worker in the future as well. I will extend full cooperation to the new chief minister.'
Millennium Post was the first to break the story of the BJP leadership agreeing to replace Sadananda Gowda to make way for Jagdish Shettar. On 3 July, we had written about how Yeddyurappa struck a deal with his seniors. Read the first report here.
The BJP sources have said that the party is planning to move Gowda to the Rajya Sabha; however, he does not seem to be keen on it. With elections due in the next year, sources say that Gowda is bargaining for the state president's post. With the chief minister's post now going to a Lingayat, Gowda, a Vokkaliga, has argued that the position of the state party president should be given to a Vokkaliga in order to attract both communities to the party during the election.
The decision to replace Gowda was taken by the central leadership of the BJP, after Shettar along with eight other ministers had resigned from the state cabinet last week, demanding a change of guard.
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