This will be the third home minister in the last five years in the Siddaramaiah government, after the unceremonious exit of K J George following a string of controversies. George was replaced by KPCC president G Parameshwara earlier in 2016.
However, subsequently, even Parameshwara was forced to resign on account of the Congress high command diktat of having “one man, one post”.
As a result for nearly three months, the home Department was vested with Siddaramaiah with no takers for the controversial and tedious job of being the home minister.
On Friday, after the induction of the three new faces in the Siddaramaiah government, the department was finally handed over to Reddy.
A four-time MLA from BTM Layout, Reddy will now be tasked with the sensitive job of managing the law and order situation in the state, that has been a matter of serious political turmoil.
And with elections around the corner, Reddy’s tenure will be anything but easy.
Meanwhile, the plump portfolio of the transport department has been handed to newly inducted minister and MLC H M Revanna.
Revanna, who is also from Bengaluru, will be trying to make a mark for himself in the department which has been till now managed by Reddy.
For MLC R B Thimmapur, having been elected from the Assembly in 2016, it was an icing on the cake with a plump portfolio like excise department being given to him. Primarily inducted to balance the caste combination in the Congress government, Thimmapur (Dalit (left)) was previously a minister in the SM Krishna government.
He was then the planning and statstics minister, which is currently being handled by his colleague in the upper house M R Seetharam.
With the induction of Thimmapur and Revanna, the upper house of the Karnataka legislature has no less than three represenations.
Meanwhile, former Small Scale Industries minister Ramesh Jarkiholi has been given a bigger portfolio of Co-operation which was previously with vested with late H S Mahadev Prasad.
With the demise of Prasad, and the subsequent election in 2017 and induction of his wife Mohan Kumari on Friday, the small scale industries department was removed from Jarkiholi and given to the green horn. Kumari also got the portfolio of Sugar, which was with her husband prior to his demise.
This apart, on Friday, Siddaramaiah also elevated four minister of state rank members of his council of ministers to cabinet rank.
These include Priyank Kharge (IT-BT & tourism), Eshwar Khandre (municipal administration), Rudrappa Lamani (textiles and muzzrai) and Pramod Madhwaraj (fisheries and sports and youth).
Source : timesofindia
