Siddaramiah mocks at Yediyurappa over delay in portfolio

Senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah on Sunday took a dig at chief minister B S Yediyurappa over the delay in allocation of portfolios to his ministerial colleagues and said he has becomeunwanted baby of the BJP.

The former chief minister claimed BJP was facing rebellion within due to which the portfolios could not be alloted even after five days of the cabinet expansion and the party high command had also been not giving any response to Yediyurappa.

What has happened is, Yediyurappa has become an unwanted baby for the BJP high command... on one side there are disgruntled MLAs who went there (to BJP). They are threatening them and then there are many disgruntled within BJP too. Hence portfolio allotment is not happening, Siddaramaiah told reporters here.

Yediyurappa had been going to Delhi and coming back and was not able to meet BJP president Amit Shah (to finalise the portfolio allocation), he claimed.

Attacking the BJP, Siddaramaiah alleged it never had the mandate and came to power through back-door through Operation Lotus (engineering defections) and horse trading.

Yediyurappa, who assumed the office after the collapse of the Congress-JDS government last month, inducted other ministers of his cabinet on August 20 but they are yet to be allocated portfolios.

He had on Saturday cited death of BJP stalwart and former finance minister Arun Jaitley, and his travel to Delhi to pay his last respects to the departed leader as the reasons for the delay in finalising the portfolio allocation.