Modi 3.0: Kumaraswamy to be sworn in as Cabinet Minister

Bengaluru: JD-S President H.D. Kumaraswamy is all set to be sworn in as a Union Cabinet Minister in Modi 3.0 government on Sunday.

Kumaraswamy won the Mandya Lok Sabha seat with a thumping margin of 2.84 lakh votes against Congress candidate Venkaramane Gowda, a close associate of Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar.

Kumaraswamy polled 58.34 per cent (8.51 lakh) votes against Gowda, who received 38.85 per cent (5.67 lakh) votes.

Kumaraswamy (65) has single-handedly defended his party and family after the surfacing of an alleged obscene video scandal involving his nephew Prajwal Revanna.

In 2005, JD-S was part of the coalition government with Congress in the state under Chief Minister N. Dharam Singh. However, on February 3, 2006, Kumaraswamy ditched the coalition government along with his 42 MLAs and formed the government with the help of the BJP.

This was the first time that Kumaraswamy became the Chief Minister and also the first time the BJP came to power in South India. However, the BJP-JD(S) government fell on October 9, 2007.

He became the Chief Minister for the second time when he headed the Congress-JD(S) coalition government from May 23, 2018, to July 23, 2019.

Kumaraswamy started his career as a film producer and entered politics during the 1996 general election. He won his seat successfully. In the following years, he successfully took over the charge of his party in the state.

Kumaraswamy is known for his ‘Grama Vastavya’ and ‘Janata Darshan’ programmes. He began the ‘Grama Vastavya’ programme to stay at a common man’s house in a village with the intention of taking the administration to the people’s doorstep. The programme earned him immense popularity and was continued by other parties as well.

The project of Belagavi Suvarna Soudha gained momentum during Kumaraswamy’s tenure as Chief Minister. His decision to waive the loans of farmers in 2018 also earned him accolades. He also played an instrumental role in implementing ‘Greater Bengaluru,’ through which 100 wards of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) were merged with 7 City Municipal Councils, one Town Municipal Council, and 111 villages around the city to form a single administrative area.