Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Dec 10: Chief minister B S Yediyurappa, is certain to expand his ministry to accommodate the disqualified legislators who have come out victorious in the by election. The chief minister is slated to travel to Delhi in a couple of days to finalize the list of new ministers after discussions with the high command.

The entire process is expected to be completed within a week. Even though there were talks of reorganization of the cabinet, sources in the party said that of such an exercise are remote.

It is said that even without visiting Delhi, the chief minister may be able to expand his ministry as the national leadership had given its green signal for giving ministerial berths to disqualified MLAs. Still, as a matter of courtesy, the chief minister wants to meet national president of the party Amit Shah and working president J P Nadda. If this is not possible, he might speak to the leaders over phone, sources stated.

At the time ministries were allotted, the leaders had left vacant certain seats by keeping in mind the chances of disqualified legislators getting elected. Ramesh Jarkiholi, Shrimant Patil, Mahesh Kumathalli, Shivaram Hebbar, B C Patil, Anand Singh, Dr K Suidhakar, Byrathi Basavaraj, K Gopalayya, S T Somashekhar and Narayana Gowda are almost certain to be made ministers.During the campaigning too, Yediyurappa had openly said that these people would be made ministers. He had repeated this promise after the declaration of bypoll result on Monday.

The current ministers and BJP leaders, some of whom had initially objected to allotment of ministries to these MLAs, are mentally prepared to accept them as ministers now. Therefore, the process of ministry expansion is expected to be a smooth affair, sources within the party said.