Siddu wins battle within Cong

BENGALURU: Chief minister Siddaramaiah won a battle over his detractors in the party on Friday as the Congress leadership backed him by refraining from asking tough questions on either the Arkavathy land denotification controversy or excise minister Satish L Jarkiholi’s resignation.
The support to the CM was apparently aimed at sending out a message to the opposition BJP, which would have exploited it during the legislature session.
Digvijay Singh, AICC general secretary in charge of Karnataka affairs, was candid on the Jarkiholi issue. “It’s between the CM and the minister. I will not interfere,” he told reporters after a coordination committee meeting here on Friday.
However, sources said that when Jarkiholi resigned on January 27, the party high command was concerned and there were calls from 10,Janpath to the state leadership. “The Congress leadership does not want things to go awry in Karnataka. At the same time, it does not want to lend its ears to dissidents who would have come up with new demands,” sources said.
Once the high command’s stand became known, Jarkiholi, who was in Gokak, reached Bengaluru late Friday evening. He was scheduled to meet Singh on Friday night.
At the coordination committee meeting, Digvijay Singh asked party leaders and ministers to back Siddaramaiah to effectively counter the BJP’s plans to destabilize the government. On the Arkavathy case, he reportedly expressed displeasure over the party’s reaction to counter BJP’s campaign stating it should have been aggressive.
He reportedly said this after Siddaramaiah defended himself using a power-point presentation to convince Singh that he had only followed court orders and not done anything illegal.
Later, Singh pulled up some ministers for soft-pedaling the party’s membership drive and failing to counter the BJP’s anti-Congress campaign. The ministers who faced the wrath included housing minister M H Ambareesh for his defiant stand on various issues.