Parameshwara to resign as Home Minister; continue as Pradesh Congress President
New Delhi, DH News Service, May 31 2017 : G Parameshwara will continue as Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee President and will resign immediately as Home Minister to devote his fulltime to the party.
In a significant decision, the party high command on Wednesday ended the suspense over the appointment of new state unit chief.
The party also made it clear that the coming assembly polls, which is likely to held in March-April 2018, will be fought under the leadership of Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
To placate Lingayats, the party appointed former Minister and senior Congress leader S R Patil as the party working president in addition to Dinesh Gundurao. Patil will look after the party affairs of North Karnataka while Dinesh Gundurao will look after Southern Karnataka said a statement released by AICC General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi here.
Power Minister D K Shivkumar, who was the top contender for the PCC president post, has been named as Chairman of the Campaign Committee for upcoming assembly polls.
Former Union Minister K H Muniyappa, who is also lobbying for the PCC president, has been made as the special invitee to Congress Working Committee, the highest decision-making body of the party. Former Minister Satish Jarkiholi, who was threatened to quit the party over his differences of opinion with his half brother and Small Scale Industries Minister Ramesh Jarkiholi, appointed AICC Secretary.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Monday held a marathon meeting with state leaders before making these announcements. Prior to that K C Venugopal, AICC general secretary for Karnataka also held a detailed meeting with all the districts unit officer bearers and other leaders at Bengaluru last week.
With the party decided to continue Parameshawara as the PCC chief, the party high command will approve only minor changes in the organisation within a month or so. There will be no major shake-up. Even the district units are unlikely to be disturbed till the elections are over, the sources said.
Though Siddaramaiah was strongly batting for Lingayat leader especially S R Patil, he was “forced” to accept Parameshwara’s continuation in the post because the Dalit leader had strong backing mainly from other senior Congress leaders.
Besides, many Karnataka leaders were wary of removing a Dalit leader, stating that it may send a wrong signal to the community.
Even, Congress floor leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjuna Kharge was said to have cautioned the Congress high command against replacing a Dalit PCC chief with a representative of the forward community.
D K Shivakumar, who was keen to take charge of the party ahead of the elections, failed to gather enough support of other seniors, who did not think he would make a better choice.
Parameshwara, who was lobbying for continuing in the post for the past few months, was also able to prevail on the party leadership that changing the leadership at this juncture would not be wise as the assembly elections were just nine months away.