Cong, JD(S) to draft common minimum programme for Karnataka alliance

Bengaluru: With Karnataka elections victory, the decades-old political party Congress’s alliance with JD(S) will now take up their respective responsibilities with the government conducting its first meeting in the city on Thursday.

The two parties have decided to come up with a common minimum programme that would ensure smooth functioning of the alliance government, Hindustan Times reported.

Congress party has former chief minister Siddaramaiah, deputy chief minister G Parameshwara and All-India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in-charge of the state KC Venugopal as its members while JD(S) has chief minister HD Kumaraswamy as well as JD(S)’s secretary-general Danish Ali to represent the regional party.

The first meeting was to ensure the coordination committee decides to name a panel to begin with who will draft the common minimum programme between the two parties for the smooth governance.

Addressing the media, Siddaramaiah said, “As this is a coalition government, it will be difficult to implement all the assurances made in the respective manifestos of the two parties, but these will be met over the course of the next 5 years.”

He added that this drafting committee would have three members from the Congress party and two members from the JD(S) party. The names of the drafting committee are yet to be announced on Friday he said.

He added, “Keeping in mind the manifestos of both the parties a draft programme will be chalked up within 10 days and will be placed before the coordination committee, which will have to approve it.”

The coordination committee also decided to continue the previous schemes running under the Siddaramaiah government which also includes the Anna Bhagya scheme that is free rice to below the poverty line families.

However, none of the party leaders revealed details of the discussions.

Though the two political parties have formed an alliance, leaders from the two parties leaders have come out to publicly speak at their loss of ministerial berths since the positions are now equally distributed among the two parties.

After meeting Venugopal, Patil told media persons that he had been advised to meet party president Rahul Gandhi.

“Whenever he calls me for a meeting I will tell him about the minor problems that some of us have, as our intention is to strengthen the party,” he said.