BENGALURU: Chief Ministe BS Yediyurappa, who airdashed to Delhi in a special flight on Wednesday, returned after perhaps his shortest visit, with no immediate clearence from the central leadership on expanding his cabinet. The cabinet expansion therefore is unlikely to happen anytime soon, or at least till the winter session in December is over.
Yediyurappa has been under pressure to expand his cabinet from the team of MLAs which joined him from the Congress-JDS coalition -- N Muniratna, MTB Nagaraj, R Shankar, H Vishwanath -- and his own partymen like Umesh Katti, Arvind Limbavali and others. His return from Delhi after just a few hours, without any clear statement on cabinet expansion or reshuffle, again opened up another round of speculation. Even though he was not scheduled to back because of the Bengaluru Tech Summit inauguration.
Yediyurappa had advanced the cabinet meeting to 10.30 am from the original noon schedule, and rushed to take a special flight from HAL to Delhi with cabinet colleague and DyCM Govind Karjol. But his mission was in vain, as he met BJP President J P Nadda, but could not get an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Home Minister Amit Shah. The CM had earlier put off his visit to Delhi because of the Bihar elections and Diwali holidays.
Some party leaders have urged caution over cabinet expansion because certain areas like Bengaluru and Belagavi are over-represented, while many districts and communities have no representation. Political analyst B S Murthy said the party has to weigh all options before the cabinet expansion exercise.
Some in the party were against expansion because they felt that the cabinet would be packed with Yediyurappa loyalists, and leave the others out in the cold. Another analyst said this delay does not augur well for Yediyurappa, whose position as numero uno is no longer sacrosanct, and he is being openly challenged by Lingayat MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal.