rediff
May 27, 2008

May 30, 2008, 1.50 pm will be a historic moment for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which will form its first independent government in south India. The BJP took this decision following an invitation from Governor Rameshwar Thakur on Tuesday.

The BJP, which held its core committee meeting on Tuesday for over five hours, decided that Yeddyurappa will be sworn in on Friday at 1.50 pm. At least 20 ministers with a Cabinet berth are likely to be sworn in with Yeddyurappa on Friday.

The BJP core committee meeting also decided to retain the ministers who were part of the Cabinet when the party was in power with the Janata Dal-Secular as its coalition partner for 20 months.

The BJP MLAs who enjoyed a ministerial berth in the JD(S)-BJP government were K S Eshwarappa, Jagadish Shettar, D H Shankarmurthy, Ramchandre Gowda, C M Udasi, Dr V S Acharya, R Ashok, Govind Karjol, Katta Subramanya Naidu, Sriramulu and Nagaraja Shetty. Shetty however will not be inducted as he lost the elections from Buntwal this year.

The party which had promised to induct a Muslim into the ministry has decided to go with Mumtaz Ali Khan who is a leader of the BJP's minority cell.

The party has decided to induct new faces into the ministry this time. The tentative list of names include Lakshman Saudi, Sureh Kumar, Bacche Gowda, Shobha Karandlage, Shankar Linge Gowda and Karunakar Reddy. The party has also decided to give all the independent MLAs, which helped it form the government, a Cabinet berth.

The party is however yet to decide on the post of speaker. The names of Vishwanath Hegde and Yogesh Bhat have been proposed by the party. However, they are yet to reach a final decision regarding the same as Hegde said that he would be more interested in a ministry rather than don the speaker's chair.