Two days after senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah took oath as the new Chief Minister of Karnataka, the first Legislative Assembly session in the southern state will be held today in Bengaluru. The newly elected MLAs will be administered oaths and a new Speaker will be elected during the session. Senior Congress leader RV Deshpande will be the pro-tem Speaker of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly for the ongoing session, which will be held for three days till May 24.
Last week on Saturday, Siddaramaiah was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Karnataka for the second time after the party's thumping victory in the Assembly elections. DK Shivakumar was sworn in as the Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka. Eight Congress MLAs were also sworn in as ministers in the Karnataka Cabinet during the oath-taking ceremony in Bengaluru.
Soon after being sworn in as the chief minister, Siddaramaiah said that the first Cabinet meeting had issued orders for the implementation of five guarantees which were promised by the party before the elections, as reported by the news agency ANI. Addressing a press briefing after the first Cabinet meeting in Vidhan Soudha, Siddaramaiah said, "Five guarantees in the manifesto were promised and the order for the implementation of those five guarantees was given after the first cabinet meeting. All will be in force after the next cabinet meeting which will be called within a week," as quoted by the news agency ANI.
The five 'main' guarantees are 200 units of free power to all households (Gruha Jyoti); Rs 2,000 monthly assistance to the woman head of every family (Gruha Lakshmi); 10 kg of rice free to every member of a BPL household (Anna Bhagya); Rs 3,000 every month for unemployed graduate youth and Rs 1,500 for unemployed diploma holders (both in the age group of 18-25) for two years (Yuva Nidhi) and free travel for women in public transport buses (Uchita Prayana).
The top brass of the Congress party including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi were present at the swearing-in ceremony. The national president of the grand old party Mallikarjun Kharge was also present during the ceremony. According to preliminary estimates, Rs 50,000 crore is required annually to fulfill the five guarantees, Siddaramaiah said, as reported by ANI.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that information about the Indira canteen is also being sought and they would be started soon. The Chief Minister was confident of launching new programmes, without affecting the economy, by taking stringent measures such as efficiency in tax collection, controlling unnecessary expenditure, avoiding borrowings, etc.
Congress bagged 135 seats in the May 10 elections to the 224-member Karnataka Assembly ousting the ruling BJP, which got 66 seats while the Janata Dal (Secular) secured 19 seats in the results declared on May 13.