It’s ex-CM who calls the shots
At a time when his detractors were set to write off former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, the leader reportedly had his way on election of new Mayor of Bengaluru as well as a major reshuffle of Indian Forest Service (IFS) officers. Sources in the state unit of BJP said while home and transport minister R Ashok had to give up lobbying for two supporters to the Mayor's post, forest minister C.P. Yogeshwar was livid when he realised the hand of the former chief minister in reshuffle of IFS officers on Monday.
The sources explained that while Mr Ashok was given a free hand to draw up a short-list of potential candidates for the Mayor's post, the minister reportedly picked Mr Basavaraju from Tigala community, Mr Venkatesh Murthy, Mr Revanna and Mr Somashekhar from Kuruba community. Though Mr Ashok was in favour of Mr Basavaraju, state BJP unit chief K S Eshwarappa insisted that the post be given to a corporator from the Kuruba community. The city legislators rallied behind Mr Somashekhar, citing that he had better outlook over city development.
Mr Venkatesh Murthy, however, approached Mr Yeddyurappa, who waited for the eleventh hour before forcing everyone to accept the former. Though the city legislators tried to stall Mr Venkatesh Murthy's candidature just before the selection of the mayoral candidate, they received ‘instructions’ to propose his name. Mr Ashok had to be content with the election of his supporter Mr Srinivas as the deputy Mayor, the sources said. Ditto with transfer of forest officers. Forest minister Mr Yogeshwar, along with forests secretary Mr Koushik Mukherjee, and PCCF Mr A K Varma, prepared a list of around 45 IFS officers and forwarded it to the chief minister’s secretariat last week. When the list was released on Monday, it was evident that the former chief minister had his way.
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