CM to effect minor Cabinet reshuffle on Monday

Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa is expected to make a minor reshuffle of portfolios of three of his Cabinet colleagues on Monday in order to keep Health & Family Welfare Minister B Sriramulu happy.

The senior BJP leader from Ballari district will now get the Social Welfare department, considered a heavy portfolio because of the sheer size of its annual budget. He will retain his backward class welfare department, too.

The CM, however, will pass on Sriramulu's current portfolio of health & family welfare to Medical Education minister K Sudhakar. The young BJP leader from Chikkaballapur district will now receive a promotion with an additional portfolio, and can have firm grip over the entire covid management.

The loser in the whole reshuffle will be deputy chief minister Govind Karjol, who will lose the social welfare portfolio to Sriramulu. Karjol, a confidante of the chief minister, will now keep only the public works department, another heavy portfolio.

The government usually assigns a member of the SC or ST community with the social welfare department, which looks after the welfare of SC/ST community members. Sriramulu belongs to the ST community.

Before the Cabinet formation last year, Sriramulu had expected, and sought deputy chief minister's post, but to his utter disappointment, he became just another minister in the Cabinet with the health department, a portfolio he held 10 years ago, too. He later demanded with the chief minister that he be given social welfare department as a compensation for not making him as deputy chief minister despite his mass appeal in the north Karnataka region, and among his community members. Considering his appeal, the BJP had fielded him from two Assembly seats in the 2018 Assembly polls, and he gave a tough fight to Siddaramaiah in Badami, while winning Molakalmuru in Chitradurga district.

In the initial days of Covid-19 outbreak, and in later weeks too, there had been a lack of coordination between Sriramulu and Sudhakar; the Health minister was extremely upset when the chief minister gave the covid war room responsibility to Sudhakar. When the two leaders began giving divergent statements on covid, the chief minister asked Education Minister S Suresh Kumar to do the daily briefing on covid for some time.