Trouble mounts for Congress in Kolar as minister Muniyappa says he wasn’t invited to rally

Missing during Saturday’s rally attended by Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar were KH Muniyappa and his daughter Roopakala M, MLA for the Kolar Gold Fields constituency.

Karnataka Food and Civil Supplies Minister KH Muniyappa. (Express photo by Renuka Puri/File)

A rift between Karnataka Food and Civil Supplies Minister KH Muniyappa and the Congress leadership over the party’s Lok Sabha election candidate in Kolar has come out in the open after the minister missed a major campaign event held in the constituency.

Muniyappa, who hails from Kolar district, represented the constituency for seven consecutive terms before his defeat in 2019. On Saturday, both Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar attended a Prajaadhvani Yatra in Kolar. Missing during the event were Muniyappa and his daughter Roopakala M, the MLA for the Kolar Gold Fields constituency.

Responding to questions on Muniyappa’s absence, Siddaramaiah told reporters that the minister had not participated in the rally because he was in charge of the Bangalore Rural constituency.

On Sunday, Muniyappa further embarrassed the party leadership by saying that he had not been informed about the rally. “Yesterday, I was at a programme in Bangalore Rural. I had no intimation about the event,” he said.

The minister in-charge for the Kolar constituency is Byrathi Suresh.

Shivakumar, however, said he was unaware of Muniyappa’s remarks.

The episode has again brought to the fore the factionalism in Kolar, which was the reason the Congress had delayed announcing a candidate for the constituency. When a faction of Congress legislators led by former Assembly speaker KR Ramesh Kumar learnt that Muniyappa’s son-in-law Chikka Peddanna would be fielded, three MLAs including Higher Education Minister D Sudhakar and two MLCs threatened to resign, resulting in a major political drama.

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Unhappy with the bickering between factions led by Kumar and Muniyappa over who should be fielded from the constituency, the Congress’s central election committee picked a surprise candidate—KV Gowtham, president of the party’s Bengaluru central district committee.

Though this helped the party quell the disagreement between the two camps, it is learnt that Muniyappa remains miffed as Peddanna was denied the ticket at the last moment.

In Kolar, Gowtham is up against Mallesh Babu of the JD(S), which is contesting the Lok Sabha polls in alliance with the BJP.

Kolar will vote on April 26 in the second phase of the elections.

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