Bengaluru: When Siddaramaiah appointed political strategist and Congress member Sunil Kanugolu his ‘chief adviser’, the 76-year-old Karnataka chief minister may have been diverting from norm by creating a position unknown to his predecessors, according to some political observers. Kanugolu, along with four others, was also accorded cabinet rank status, which comes with its own perks.
“There is no provision in the Constitution nor are there any restrictions to do the same,” a senior Karnataka Congress leader told ThePrint on condition of anonymity.
Since he assumed office last month, following Congress’s decisive victory in the May assembly elections in Karnataka, Siddaramaiah has accorded cabinet rank status to five people who are not part of the state council of ministers. This includes the appointments of Naseer Ahmed and K. Govindaraj — both members of the Legislative Council — as political secretaries with cabinet ranks, and that of his longtime aide K.V. Prabhakar as media adviser.
In addition to Kanugolu’s appointment as ‘chief adviser’, Siddaramaiah also appointed A.S. Ponnanna, first-time MLA from Virajpet, as his ‘legal adviser’.
These cabinet appointments are above and beyond the 34 as part of the Council of Ministers — including those of Siddaramaiah himself and Deputy CM D.K. Shivakumar.
In February last year, a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by activist S.R. Hiremath questioning the appointment of political secretaries by the previous chief minister had led to the Karnataka HC issuing notices to the government in this regard.
Bengaluru-based political analyst A. Narayana told ThePrint that there was a precedent in Karnataka of appointment of those who could not, for various reasons, be accommodated in the cabinet, as political secretaries. For instance, former CMs H.D. Deve Gowda, J.H. Patel, Dharam Singh, B.S. Yediyurappa and Basavaraj Bommai too had political secretaries in tow.
“Almost all CMs have done this (appoint political secretaries). This is one way to circumvent this rule that the total strength of the ministry should not exceed 15 per cent of the assembly. Ever since that rule came into being, all governments have appointed political secretaries and this number has gone up,” Narayana told ThePrint.
According to the 91st Amendment to the Constitution (2003), the total number of ministers in a state cabinet, including the chief minister, shall not exceed 15 per cent of the total strength of the legislature.
Narayana, who is a faculty at Bengaluru’s Azim Premji University, pointed out that although Karnataka has had a history of political or parliamentary secretaries and even ‘economic advisers’, the position of ‘chief adviser’ is a new concept in the state.
V.S. Ugrappa, a senior Congress leader, told ThePrint, however, “There is precedence of appointing advisors and it has been done with the good intention of providing good administration”.
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What is cabinet rank status
Kanugolu’s appointment, however, hints more at who Siddaramaiah wants to trust during his second stint as chief minister, said party sources. With Shivakumar likely to claim his turn as chief minister once the government nears its halfway mark, and the general election next year, Siddaramaiah seems to be rewarding those loyal to him, sources added.
A cabinet minister draws around Rs 3.22 lakh per month as salary, besides rental allowance of Rs 1.2 lakh and daily allowance of Rs 2,500. The person is also entitled to an official residence, vehicles and separate staff at the expense of the exchequer.
Despite having stepped down as CM in July 2021, B.S. Yediyurappa continued to enjoy cabinet rank status and lived in ‘Cauvery’ — the palatial bungalow which is seen as the unofficial personal residence of the head of government in Karnataka — until last month.
Between May 2018 and October 2019, Siddaramaiah too lived in ‘Cauvery’, which is located next to ‘Krishna’ — the home office of the CM — as chairman of the coordination committee during the tenure of the H.D. Kumaraswamy-led coalition government.
Though party sources claimed the All India Congress Committee (AICC) pushed for Kanugolu’s appointment, the 41-year-old strategist will now have unprecedented access to the chief minister’s inner circle. Former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh had in a similar fashion appointed political strategist Prashant Kishor, a former colleague of Kanugolu, as his ‘principal adviser’ with cabinet rank status in 2021.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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