BENGALURU: Five days after Governor Vajubhai Vala invited the Congress-JD (S) coalition to form the government, state JD (S) president H.D. Kumaraswamy and his Congress counterpart Dr G. Parameshwar will take oath as chief minister and deputy chief minister, respectively, on Wednesday evening at an event billed as the foundation for Opposition unity as a galaxy of leaders are scheduled to come together in front of the majestic seat of power, Vidhana Soudha.
After a day of hard fought negotiations between the incoming chief minister and the Congress quartet including state in charge K.C. Venugopal, former chief minister Siddaramaiah, KPCC chief G. Parameshwar and the party’s trusted leader D.K.Shivakumar, the coalition partners have agreed on power-sharing formula on the eve of swearing-in ceremony. There will be only one deputy chief minister Dr. G. Parameshwar. The Congress’ 22 ministers will include Dr Parameswar, and the 14 of JD (S) will be accommodated in the cabinet. Congress president Rahul Gandhi has chosen former speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar to take over as the presiding officer of the Assembly for the second time.
He was speaker during the rule of undivided Janata Dal (1994-99). The post of deputy speaker will be held by JD (S). Legislators likely to join the ministry will be chosen after the trust vote scheduled for Thursday. Sources in Congress said during a meeting held here on Tuesday, Congress party leaders heeded to the plea of Mr Kumaraswamy to restrict the number of deputy chief ministers to one as more DCMs would be a burden on the government. Speaking to the media soon after the meeting, Mr Venugopal said the agenda was restricted to a couple of critical issues as the rest could be discussed by the coalition partners at a later date.
Mr Kumaraswamy said legislators likely to be inducted into the cabinet would be decided by tomorrow evening. His counterpart in Congress and other leaders would have one more round of discussions on Wednesday on drawing up the final list of candidates to be inducted into the cabinet. Mr Kumaraswamy said the coalition partners were not bothered about either black day celebrations or black band protests announced by BJP leaders.
