Siddaramaiah to hold CLP meeting at 11 am today

Former chief minister and Congress leader Siddaramaiah has called for another Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting at 11 am on Monday.

All MLAs have been directed to attend the meeting, which comes in the wake of an alleged rift in the Congress-JD(S) coalition government.

The meeting has been called for a day after two Congress MLAs- Anand Singh and JN Ganesh- had a "minor fight".

However, Congress leader Zameer Ahmed said the two leaders had minor differences after a discussion between the "two friends."

Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge had said on Saturday that the party would issue a show-cause notice to MLAs who did not attend the CLP meeting held in Bengaluru on Friday, asking for an explanation from them.

"First, we will issue a show-cause notice asking for an explanation. Then we will take some action after discussion with the party members," he told ANI.

Also, Kharge said out of the four MLAs who were absent at the meeting, two MLAs clarified their absence. "We will issue notices to the two who did not respond," he had said.

Four Congress MLAs skipped Friday's meeting, following which the Congress moved rest of the 76 legislators to a resort.

The meeting was convened by the party to assess whether its flock was intact amid speculation that some of the party MLAs had switched over to the BJP.

The Congress, which shares power with JD-S, has 80 MLAs in the 224-member Assembly, including the Speaker. Accordingly, 79 MLAs were expected to attend the CLP meeting held under the supervision of central leaders K C Venugopal and Mallikarjun Kharge.