HD Kumaraswamy, the chief ministerial designate of the Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) alliance, on Monday said the modalities of the Karnataka Cabinet will be finalised on Tuesday, ANI reported. Kumaraswamy met the Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Delhi and invited them to attend his oath-taking ceremony on Wednesday.
“Rahul ji has cleared the modalities to be done, he has given permission to Karnataka Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal to discuss the matter and finalise,” Kumaraswamy told reporters when asked about the deputy chief minister. “Local leaders and Venugopal will sit together tomorrow [Tuesday] to finalise things.”
There had been reports that Karnataka will have two deputy chief ministers.
Kumaraswamy said that Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi had agreed to attend the oath-taking ceremony. “I wanted show my respect and regards to the Gandhi family. That is why I came here,” he added. He also said that he had invited Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury to attend the ceremony.
Meanwhile, the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha on Monday moved the Supreme Court seeking to quash Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala’s decision to invite Kumaraswamy to form government, PTI reported. The outfit alleged that the post-poll alliance between the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) is a “fraud on the electorate and violative of the Constitution”.
The Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular), along with the Bahujan Samaj Party and two independents, have the support of 117 MLAs, while the Bharatiya Janata Party has the support of 104 legislators.
Kumaraswamy will take oath on Wednesday, but the rest of the leaders will take oath only after the trust vote, which is expected the same day. He had dismissed reports that the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Congress were working out a power-sharing formula for heading the government for 30 months each, similar to the agreement in 2006 between the Janata Dal (Secular) and the BJP, which had fallen through.
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