Arvind Kejriwal and KCR are among the leaders who have not been invited to the event.
Bengaluru:
NDTV has learned that if the swearing-in ceremony of the new Karnataka government after the Congress party’s emphatic electoral victory wants to convey the message of a united opposition, it may have to do so as some of its top faces are missing.
According to Congress sources, invitations have not been sent to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Telangana counterpart KCR, while West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee will skip the event due to prior engagements.
Sources said Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati are also not on the guest list.
Those invited include Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, D Raja and Sitaram Yechury of the Left, actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan have also been invited.
Congress chief ministers Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan, Bhupesh Baghel of Chhattisgarh and Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu of Himachal Pradesh have also been invited.
Chief Minister-designate Siddaramaiah and his deputy DK Shivakumar flew to Delhi to discuss the delicate task of picking ministers with the Congress leadership amid preparations at the Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru for the ceremony to be held at 12:30 pm on Saturday.
Selecting a cabinet that balances representation of all communities, regions, factions and old and new generations of legislators is expected to be a major challenge for the party.
Shivakumar said, “We have come to invite our leaders for tomorrow… They came after sweating it out and gave proper instructions. So, I wanted to invite them personally. Later, we will discuss the cabinet formation.” Have been.”
He added that leaders of the BJP and the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) have also been invited to the swearing-in ceremony, as people’s representatives, they are also part of the government machinery, news agency PTI reported.
Five days after the Congress’s electoral victory in Karnataka and intense deliberations by party leaders, a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party on Thursday formally elected Siddaramaiah as its leader, after which he staked claim to the governor .