Bengaluru: Weeks after taking oath as chief minister, BS Yediyurappa finally expanded his Cabinet with 17 new ministers on Tuesday. Former chief minister Jagadish Shettar is one of the lawmakers who was given a Cabinet berth. Shettar was at the helm for 10 months after Sadananda Gowda in 2012 when Yediyurappa was arrested in an alleged corruption case.
However, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers from across the state have expressed their disappointment over Shettar’s new role in the Cabinet, though he is not the only former chief minister to have taken oath as a minister in the state.
Veteran Congress leaders Basappa Danappa Jatti, popularly known as BD Jatti, and SR Kanti, too had served as chief ministers and later joined the government as ministers. After the 1957 Vidhan Sabha elections, the Congress came to power in the state with S Nijalingappa as the CM for the second time. He soon had to put in his papers due to internal rift and nominated Jatti as his successor.
Jatti served as CM between 1958 and 1962. In the 1962 general elections, Nijalingappa again wheeled the grand old party to power, but was defeated in his own seat. The Congress high-command decided to wait until Nijalingappa got elected from some other constituency. In between, Kanti was made chief minister (three-and-a-half months) till Nijalingappa won from Bagalkot by-election and was sworn in as CM.
Jatti and Kanti were known to be true and loyal Congressmen, but when the high command asked them to join the Cabinet, the duo refused to do so as they had already served as its head. After much persuasion, they became a part of Nijalingappa’s Cabinet. While Jatti was given charge of finance, Kanti became the education minister.
Now, history is being repeated with Shettar taking oath in Yediyurappa’s cabinet. The sequences have many other similarities. For one, Nijalingappa and Yediyurappa both belong to the Lingayat community, while Jatti, S Nijalingappa and Jagadish Shettar come from the Mumbai-Karnataka region.
Last time, when Yediyurappa was sent to jail, Sadananda Gowda served as CM between 2011 and 2012. Shettar was put in the coveted chair on the basis of rotation of power. Later, Yediyurappa became a leader of a party Karnataka Janata Paksha before merging it with the BJP in 2014.