36 legislators, 39 Congress workers to be appointed to key positions in boards and corporations: Shivakumar

PTI, Jan 18, 2024, 4:22 PM IST

Bengaluru: Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on Thursday said that 36 legislators and 39 Congress workers will be appointed to key positions in state-run boards and corporations.

He said that the list would be released ‘any moment’.

“36 legislators and 39 party workers have been accommodated in the appointments to boards and corporations. The party leaders and workers have brought the party to power in the state, and they have been rewarded suitably,” Shivakumar, who is also Karnataka Congress Unit President, told reporters.

Meanwhile, he said a meeting of the party’s Lok Sabha election committee would be held on Friday.

“We will have the first round of meeting tomorrow. Jagadish Shettar and Laxman Savadi (who joined the Congress from the BJP before the Assembly elections in May last year) have also been invited to the meeting. District in-charge ministers have collected opinions from all the constituencies, and it will be discussed in tomorrow’s meeting,” Shivakumar said.

On some Ministers reportedly reluctant to contest the Lok Sabha elections, he said, “If the party wants, everyone has to contest, whether it is me or anyone else.”

Shivakumar expressed confidence that the party would win at least 25 Lok Sabha seats of the total 28 in Karnataka.

Regarding the JD(S) joining the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, he said, “It is their wish.”

“The last time we joined hands with JD(S), we were hopeful of winning a lot of seats but ended up with one seat each,” Shivakumar noted.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 25 seats and the Congress and JD(S) one each. An independent backed by the BJP also emerged victorious.

On some BJP leaders’ reported comments that the Congress would suffer a ‘setback’ in the Lok Sabha elections for its stand on the Ram temple issue, he said, “There is Rama in (Chief Minister) Siddaramaiah and there is Shiva in Shivakumar. Faith is a private matter. I believe in all faiths. There should be ‘dharma’ in politics but there should not be any politics in ‘dharma’.”