From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru

Bengaluru, Mar 3: In what could be a matter of concern for the Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, most of the ruling Congress legislators seem to be distancing themselves from their leader.

How does one explain that hardly about 70 Congress party legislators out of the 150 attended the Congress legislature party meeting and even lesser number of them could find time to attend the dinner hosted by the chief minister.

Barely 50 ruling party legislators, including cabinet ministers, attended the dinner hosted by Siddaramaiah at his official residence, while the attendance at the CLP meeting was slightly better at around 70, informed sources said, pointing out that the dinner was arranged on a week day and not during the week-end when all the legislators will be in the city.

The sources mentioned that the Chief Minister urged his party legislators to get information and documents pertaining to any misdeeds by BJP opposition leader JagadishShettar and JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy, both former chief ministers, despite having the intelligence department under his control.

The Chief Minister’s flip-flops and weak defence on the ultra-luxury Hubolt diamond studded wrist watch and the belated decision to hand over the same for display at the Cabinet hall in Vidhana Soudha after declaring it as a government asset did not find any takers and the legislators did not buy the contention that it was a gift.

"Even if the wrist watch was a gift and there was no quid-pro-quo dealings, why did the Chief Minister first offer to sell the watch for Rs 5 lakh when Kumaraswamy first raised the issue and alleged that it was worth Rs 70 lakh?," a Congress legislator privately asked.

Further, Siddaramaiah being a follower of Socialist leader Ram ManoharLohia, should have shown some discretion and desisted from brazenly wearing the ultra-luxury wrist watch and expensive imported dark glasses, said the party leader.

Several senior Congress leaders, including MalikayyaGuttedar and K B Koliwad, took the style of functioning of some of the ministers, especially Qamarul Islam, P T Parameshwara Naik and Shivaraj Thangadai, and said the ministers were responsible for bringing down the party’s image by their non-performance and involvement in needless controversies.

The Congress legislators reportedly took many of the district-in-charge ministers for the poor performance of the ruling party in their respective districts during the recent zilla panchayat and taluk panchayat elections.

"If the State Government continues to ignore the party and the deadwood in the State Cabinet is not thrown out to ensure improvement in the functioning of the Government, the future of the ruling party will be in danger in the next assembly elections in 2018," a senior member is reported to have remarked.