Bengaluru, June 30: Fuelling the speculations about the change in Karnataka government leadership, AICC President M Mallikarjun Kharge said that the high command will take a call on the chief minister and not based on the statements of any state leaders.
Kharge was on a three days visit to Bengaluru, where the reporters asked him about the visit of AICC General Secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala, who is meeting MLAs individually and speculations about the leadership changes in the State.
Kharge said that Surjewala was in charge of Karnataka and he was free to meet legislators individually and elicit information about the government functioning and the problems in their individual constituencies. Based on his findings, he will send us a report and based on the report, the party will take a decision on what should be done, he said.
When asked about the change in leadership, Kharge said that he could not tell what was in the minds of party leaders. ``Likewise, I can not give clarifications for the statements made by either minister or legislators in the State. I have a different job to do,'' he said.
The speculations about leadership change was further fuelled on Sunday night, when Deputy Chief MInister D K Shivakumar met Kharge on Sunday night, soon after he arrived from Delhi. Both Kharge and Shivakumar refused to comment on their meeting, though Shivakumar emerged jubilant from the house of Kharge.
On Monday, Surjewala arrived at the KPCC office, where he had summoned over 40 Congress MLAs for a one to one meeting with him. Before the meeting, Surjewala said that he had a lot of issues to discuss with the legislators and collect details.
``We will be discussing the implementation of government's guarantee schemes, party organisation in the constituency level, the functioning of frontal organisations of the party in State level and the works to be taken up by the government. I will be collecting the information secretly, but will be allowing the legislators to talk with open minds. That is the reason they have been given the privacy of meeting me one to one,'' he said.
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Many of the MLAs who met Surjewala refused to come before the media. However, in private, they confessed that the meeting was fruitful as they could discuss their constituency problems and problems faced by them in taking up developmental works in their constituency. For those who could not speak English or Hindi, Surjewala had a translator also.
Some MLAs told Surjewala that the guarantee schemes, if implemented as promised, could have brought a good name for the government. However, intervention of local politicians and apathy of bureaucrats were a setback for proper implementation of the schemes. It was very difficult to work with the bureaucrats as most of them were well connected in the ministries, which was undermining the clout of MLAs in their respective constituencies.
