Jagadish Shettar (56), a prominent Lingayat leader from North Karnataka, took oath as chief minister of Karnataka at a simple ceremony held at the Glass House in Raj Bhavan, here on Thursday. A full-fledged 33-member team with two deputy chief ministers also took oath along with him.
Shettar is the 27th chief minister of Karnataka since 1947 and succeeds D V Sadananda Gowda, who held the position for a period of 11 months and one week. He is also the third chief minister of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in four years, which came to power after the 2008 assembly elections.
Shettar is a four-time legislator representing Hubli rural constituency in Dharwad district, about 400 km north of Bangalore. He comes from a family, which has close association with the RSS. He became Speaker of the assembly in 2008 when BJP won majority in the 2008 assembly elections and formed the government under the leadership of B S Yeddyurappa. Later, he held the position of minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj in both Yeddyurappa and Gowda cabinets.
Gowda resigned on July 11 after the fresh round of dissidence within the party forced the party high command to change the leadership. Gowda became chief minister on August 4, 2011 after the BJP’s first chief minister BS Yeddyurappa was forced to resign after he indicted in the Lokayukta report on mining scandal in the state in July last year.
With this, for the second time in the history of Karnataka, three chief ministers from the same party have formed government in one single term of the assembly. Earlier, between 1989 and 1994, three chief ministers from Congress — Veerendra Patil, S Bangarappa and Veerappa Moily — had formed government.
For the first time in the history of Karnataka two deputy chief ministers took oath. They are K S Eshwarappa, state unit president of BJP and R Ashok, who held twin positions of home and transport in the previous D V Sadananda Gowda ministry. Governor H R Bhardwaj administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers.
The Shettar cabinet includes nine new faces, while three — K S Eshwarappa, Aravind Limbavali and S K Bellubbi — who were ministers in the B S Yeddyurappa government have made a comeback. Shettar has retained all the ministers from the Gowda cabinet.
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Those sworn-in as ministers are: Govind M Karjol, S Suresh Kumar, C M Udasi, Vishveshwara Hegde Kageri, Umesh V Katti, Basavaraja Bommai, Murugesh R Nirani, V Somanna, Shobha Karandlaje, B N Bache Gowda, M P Renukacharya, C P Yogeeshwara, S A Ravindranatha, Revu Naik Belamagi, Balachandra Jarkiholi, S A Ramadas, Anand Asnotikar, A Narayanaswamy, Raju Gowda alias Narasimha Nayak and Varthur Prakash.
The new faces in the ministry are: Sogadu Shivanna, C T Ravi, D N Jeevaraja, S K Bellubbi, Aravind Limbavali, B J Puttaswamy, Anand Singh, Kalakappa Gurushantappa Bandi, Sunil Vallyapure, Kota Srinivasa Poojari and Appachu Ranjan. The portfolios were yet to be allocated to all the ministers.
Former chief ministers, Sadananda Gowda and B S Yeddyurappa, party General Secretary Anant Kumar were among others present on the occasion.
Later addressing his maiden press meet after taking oath, he said the immediate task for his government was to tackle drought and drinking water shortage in several taluks.
“My first priority is to address the drought and drinking water shortage issues in the state. We will implement the drought relief works effectively and develop the entire state including the backward regions. We will try to give an honest, transparent and corruption-free government”, Shettar said.
Deputy Chief Ministers K S Eshwarappa and R Ashoka and other cabinet colleagues accompanied Shettar at his maiden press conference. Shettar also chaired his first cabinet meeting after taking the oath of office.
The drought relief works would be further stepped up in affected villages, he said.
Appreciating the work of his predecessors, B S Yeddyurappa and D V Sadananda Gowda, he said his government would continue on their path of progress. “Our main agenda is development of the state. I will continue in the path shown by them,” Shettar said.
We will take everybody into confidence and our objective is to give good governance by working together,”
Reiterating the BJP govern-ment’s aim of making Karnat-aka the number one state in the country, the chief minister said his aim would be towards building a prosperous Karnataka, and making it a front-line and model state. His government would try to remove regional imbalances and focus on balanced development by not discriminating against one district or another.