5 K'taka MPs including H D Kumaraswamy, Shobha Karandlaje get ministerial berths in Modi 3.0 cabinet

New Delhi, Jun 9: Narendra Modi is set to take the oath as prime minister of India for a third consecutive term on Sunday, June 9, at 7:15 pm. Many MPs will join Modi’s cabinet during the ceremony.

Five representatives from Karnataka will join Modi’s cabinet. They include Nirmala Sitharaman, elected to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka; Prahlad Joshi, MP for Hubballi-Dharwad; Shobha Karandlaje, MP for Bengaluru North; V Somanna, MP for Tumkur; and H D Kumaraswamy, MP for Mandya. All five will take the oath as ministers alongside Modi on Sunday. 

Out of these five, three were union ministers in the previous term. Nirmala Sitharaman served as the finance minister, Shobha Karandlaje was the minister of state for food processing industries, and Prahlad Joshi was the minister of parliamentary affairs.

H D Kumaraswamy

There has been much speculation about which Karnataka MPs will secure positions in Modi’s cabinet. The inclusion of former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy was widely anticipated due to the JD(S) alliance with the BJP in Karnataka, and it has now been officially confirmed.

Kumaraswamy won the Mandya Lok Sabha seat with a thumping margin of 2.84 lac votes against Congress candidate Venkaramane Gowda, a close associate of Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar.

Kumaraswamy polled 58.34 per cent (8.51 lac) votes against Gowda, who received 38.85 per cent (5.67 lac) votes.

Kumaraswamy (65) has single-handedly defended his party and family after the surfacing of an alleged obscene video scandal involving his nephew Prajwal Revanna.In 2005, JD-S was part of the coalition government with Congress in the state under chief minister N Dharam Singh. However, on February 3, 2006, Kumaraswamy ditched the coalition government along with his 42 MLAs and formed the government with the help of the BJP.

This was the first time that Kumaraswamy became the Chief Minister and also the first time the BJP came to power in South India. However, the BJP-JD(S) government fell on October 9, 2007.

He became the Chief Minister for the second time when he headed the Congress-JD(S) coalition government from May 23, 2018, to July 23, 2019.

Kumaraswamy started his career as a film producer and entered politics during the 1996 general election. He won his seat successfully. In the following years, he successfully took over the charge of his party in the state.

Kumaraswamy is known for his ‘Grama Vastavya’ and ‘Janata Darshan’ programmes. He began the ‘Grama Vastavya’ programme to stay at a common man’s house in a village with the intention of taking the administration to the people’s doorstep. The programme earned him immense popularity and was continued by other parties as well.

The project of Belagavi Suvarna Soudha gained momentum during Kumaraswamy’s tenure as Chief Minister. His decision to waive the loans of farmers in 2018 also earned him accolades. He also played an instrumental role in implementing ‘Greater Bengaluru,’ through which 100 wards of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) were merged with 7 City Municipal Councils, one Town Municipal Council, and 111 villages around the city to form a single administrative area.

Shobha Karandlaje

Senior BJP leader from Karnataka, Shobha Karandlaje, is all set for a new role as a central minister in the new NDA government headed by prime minister Narendra Modi.

She held the portfolio of Minister of State (MoS) for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in the previous BJP government at the Centre.

Shobha won the Bengaluru North Lok Sabha seat with a record margin of 2.59 lac votes, defeating her nearest rival, M.V. Rajeev Gowda, a former professor from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Bengaluru. She garnered 56.3 per cent votes against Gowda’s 41.5 per cent.

Shobha polled 9.86 lac votes, while Gowda received 7.26 lac votes. Shobha was asked to contest from Bengaluru North at the last minute as she faced stiff resistance in the Udupi-Chikkamagaluru Lok Sabha seat, which she represented in the 2019 general election.

57-year-old Shobha is a close confidant of former chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa. She served as the Minister of Rural Development, Minister of Food and Civil Supplies, and Minister of Energy in Karnataka. During her tenure, the Ministry of RDPR in Karnataka was awarded as the No. 1 state in India in Rural Development and Panchayat Raj.

Shobha is unmarried and has been associated with the RSS since her early years. She has a postgraduate degree in Social Work from Mangaluru University and a Master of Arts in Sociology from Karnataka State Open University.

Shobha is known as a Hindutva firebrand leader. She served as a member of the Standing Committee on Energy, a member of the Committee on Empowerment of Women, and contributed as a member of the Consultative Committee under the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Earlier, she had quit the party to join the KJP launched by B S Yediyurappa but later returned to the BJP with him.

V Sommana

The inclusion of Lingayat leader V Somanna comes as a surprise. It was initially believed that former CMs Basavaraj Bommai and Jagadeesh Shettar would be appointed to ministerial positions. However, Somanna was favored over them.

Speaking to the media, Somanna said, “I have been given the opportunity to become a Union Minister. I express my gratitude to the prime minister, Amit Shah, J P Nadda, and other party leaders. Nirmala Sitharaman, Prahlad Joshi, Shobha Karandlaje, H D Kumaraswamy, and myself—five from Karnataka—will be taking the oath as union ministers on Sunday.”

Pralhad Joshi

Outgoing Union Minister Pralhad Joshi is all set for another significant role in the Union Cabinet under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Joshi, in Modi 2.0, held Mines, Coal, and Parliamentary Affairs portfolio.

Joshi (62) is in close proximity to BJP national leadership and is also considered to be close to the Sangh Parivar. He has been elected for the fifth consecutive term from the Dharwad Parliamentary seat and won with a margin of 97,324 votes against Congress candidate Vinod Asooti.

Joshi is married to Jyothi Joshi and has three daughters. An industrialist turned politician, Joshi studied BA at K S Arts College in Hubballi. A staunch follower of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Joshi got an opportunity to contest as the BJP candidate from Dharwad North in 2004.

Joshi has remained unbeatable in the Dharwad Lok Sabha seat since 2004. The Dharwad North seat was renamed Dharwad after delimitation.

He came to the limelight during the Idgah Maidan row in Hubballi, which drew national attention in the early 1990s.

In 1994, six persons were killed in police firing in the state, a development which played a major role in the rise of the BJP in Dharwad, north Karnataka and subsequently in the rest of the state. Joshi was at the forefront at that time as the President of the Rashtra Dhwaj Gourav Rakshana Samithi.

He also actively participated in the BJP and Hindu organisations' which campaigned to hoist the tricolour at the Idgah Maidan. He also led the Save Kashmir Movement.

He became the Dharwad District President of the BJP in 1995 and continued to hold the till 1998. After serving as a member of various committees, he was appointed as the Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas in September 2014.

He went on to become the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Coal, and Mines in the 2019 BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Joshi has also published a book titled ‘Sadhaneya Sankalpa’ in Kannada. He is a keen listener of Hindustani classical music and plays chess, badminton, and carrom.

Joshi participated as a member of the Indian Parliamentary delegation at the 63rd session of the General Assembly, UNO, in December 2008 and spoke on atrocities against women and children.

He also participated as a member of the Indian Parliamentary delegation in April 2012 and spoke on the need for a “Genuine Political Settlement” to the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka.

(With inputs from IANS)