Is Congress Outsourcing Cabinet Expansion To Apparatchiks?

A day after cabinet expansion on August 3 when he inducted 19 ministers, Karnataka chief minister D K Shivakumar was heard talking tough as sulking MLAs who were left out of the gravy train threatened to quit the Congress party. He declared that he would have no hesitation in accepting their resignations. Interacting with the media, he said those who wish to continue in politics should remain with the party as “if there is a party, everything else follows.” What is the basis for DKS’s confidence in adopting a tough stand? Party sources insist that it is not just that Gandhis have decided to back DKS for now. It is also because the entire cabinet reshuffle exercise was fine tuned in Delhi with inputs of who should be included were filtered by two party functionaries or apparatchiks close to the Gandhis. It may seem odd but the buzz is that two people who helped DKS finalise the cabinet list are: Sunil Kanogulu and Sasikanth Senthil Kumar, a former Karnataka cadre IAS, who is now a Lok Sabha MP from Tamil Nadu. An election strategist, Kanogulu was appointed as advisor by CM Siddaramaiah. This courtesy was extended to him for bringing the Congress to power by strategising its campaign in 2022. Of course, it may be one thing to reward a poll strategist with a plum post but to let him call the shots in cabinet making! Many Congress leaders feel that perhaps the party bosses were perhaps going over the top. Or it is quite possible that Kanogulu may have only been a front; he was being used by a well-oiled machinery to make money for cabinet posts for a section within the party. Or else why would the Cabinet expansion have come exactly two months after DKS took oath as the CM?