Jagadish Shettar to be formally elected as Karnataka Chief Minister

Bangalore, July 10 (ANI): The Karnataka Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is scheduled to meet today to formally elect Jagadish Shettar as the new Chief Minister.

Senior BJP leaders Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh are in Bangalore to oversee the transition from outgoing chief minister M Sadananda Gowda to Shettar.

Shettar, who has the backing of former Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, will be the third BJP chief minister in the state in four years since the party came to power there in 2008.

The BJP's core group met in New Delhi on Saturday to approve BJP President Nitin Gadkari's strategy of resolving the Karnataka crisis by replacing chief minister Sadananda Gowda with Shettar.

Gadkari had earlier said: "In view of the current political situation in Karnataka, Sadananda Gowda has handed over his resignation to me. In his tenure, he did good work and the performance of our government was very good.

"Our party has decided to hand over the leadership to Jagadish Shettar," Gadkari said.

The crisis in the Karnataka BJP intensified last week after nine ministers resigned from the State Cabinet, thereby projecting a show of strength in their campaign for ousting Chief Minister Gowda.

The ministers, who quit earlier were Jagadish Shettar (Rural Development), CM Udasi (PWD), Murugesh Nirani (Industries), V Somanna (Housing), Umesh Katti (Agriculture), Basavaraj Bommai (Water Resources), Revu Naik Belamagi (Libraries and Animal Husbandry), M P Renukacharya (Excise) and Raju Gowda (Small Scale Industries)

Following the decision of BJP leadership that there would be a change in Chief Minister ship the Ministers withdrew their resignation. (ANI)