The Basavaraj Bommai ministry was the 33rd Council of Ministers of Karnataka, headed by Basavaraj Bommai of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It was sworn in on 28 July 2021 and served until 13 May 2023, when it was succeeded by the Second Siddaramaiah ministry. The Governor of Karnataka, Thawarchand Gehlot, administered the oath of office and secrecy to Bommai at the Glass House of Raj Bhavan, Bengaluru. The ministry had no Deputy Chief Minister throughout its tenure.
Background
Basavaraj Bommai Basavaraj Bommai (born 28 January 1960) is a mechanical engineering graduate from B. V. Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering & Technology, Hubballi, who worked briefly at Tata Motors in Pune before entering politics. He began his political career with the Janata Dal in the mid-1990s, serving as General Secretary of the party and as a member of the Karnataka Legislative Council from the Dharwad local authorities constituency in 1998 and again in 2004. He joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in February 2008 and was first elected to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly from Shiggaon (Haveri district) in the same year, a seat he has held since. He is the son of S. R. Bommai, the 11th Chief Minister of Karnataka, making him and his father the second father-son duo in Karnataka's history - alongside H. D. Deve Gowda and H. D. Kumaraswamy - to have each served as chief minister. A member of the Veerashaiva-Lingayat community, he served as Minister for Water Resources under three successive chief ministers from 2008 to 2013, and as Minister for Home Affairs, Law, Parliamentary Affairs, and Co-operation in the Fourth Yediyurappa ministry from July 2019.
Leadership transition B. S. Yediyurappa resigned as Chief Minister on 26 July 2021, on the second anniversary of his government's formation, ending months of speculation about his departure. The BJP legislature party met the following day at a private hotel in Bengaluru, with Union Ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and G. Kishan Reddy serving as central observers. The party unanimously elected Bommai as the new leader of the legislature party, following which he drove to Raj Bhavan alongside Yediyurappa to stake claim to form the government. Governor Thawarchand Gehlot administered the oath of office to Bommai as the 23rd Chief Minister of Karnataka at the Glass House of Raj Bhavan at 11 am on 28 July 2021.
Cabinet expansion A week after his own swearing-in, Bommai inducted 29 ministers into his cabinet on 4 August 2021, with the oath administered by Governor Gehlot at Raj Bhavan. Of the 29 ministers, 23 had previously served in the Yediyurappa cabinet, while six - V. Sunil Kumar, Araga Jnanendra, Munirathna, Halappa Achar, Shankar Patil Munenakoppa, and B. C. Nagesh - were new faces. Ten of the inductees were legislators who had defected from the Congress-JD(S) coalition in 2019, facilitating the collapse of the Second H. D. Kumaraswamy ministry and the BJP's return to power. No Deputy Chief Minister was appointed. The cabinet's composition included eight Lingayats, seven Vokkaligas, seven OBCs, three Scheduled Caste members, two Brahmins, one Scheduled Tribe member, and one woman - Shashikala Jolle.
Policies and legislation
OBC reservation and Muslim quota In its final cabinet meeting before the 2023 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election, held on 24 March 2023, the Bommai government scrapped the 4% reservation for Muslims under the OBC Category 2B and redistributed it equally between the Vokkaliga (new Category 2C, raised from 4% to 6%) and Veerashaiva-Lingayat (new Category 2D, raised from 5% to 7%) communities. Muslims were moved to the 10% Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) category. Bommai stated that there was no constitutional provision for reservation on religious grounds and framed the decision as a proactive measure to forestall judicial challenge. The move, coming one month before polling, was widely interpreted as an effort to consolidate the support of the two dominant OBC communities ahead of the elections. The decision was subsequently challenged before the Supreme Court; the incoming Second Siddaramaiah ministry administered reservations under court-directed status quo, leaving the underlying order in contested legal limbo.
Controversies
K. S. Eshwarappa resignation Santosh Patil, a Belagavi-based contractor hired by the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department in 2019 to construct roads worth ₹4 crore in Hindalga village, was found dead at a hotel in Udupi on 12 April 2022. In a purported WhatsApp suicide note, Patil accused RDPR Minister K. S. Eshwarappa and his aides of demanding a 40% commission for the release of payments due to him. Police registered a case of abetment of suicide against Eshwarappa. Despite initially rejecting calls for his resignation, Eshwarappa submitted his resignation to Bommai on the evening of 15 April 2022, after the BJP central leadership - including national president J. P. Nadda - directed him to step down to prevent further electoral damage to the party. Eshwarappa stated his resignation was intended to prevent embarrassment to his party and expressed confidence that he would be cleared by the investigation.
Death of Umesh Katti Umesh Katti, the Minister for Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs and Forest, died on 6 September 2022 due to cardiac complications. Katti had represented the Hukkeri constituency in Belagavi district and was a senior BJP leader who had served across multiple ministries since 2010. Chief Minister Bommai described him as "a very close friend" and called his death "a huge loss for the state."
Council of Ministers
District-wise representation
District Cabinet Ministers Name of Ministers Bagalkote 2 Govind Karjol Murugesh Nirani Belagavi 2 Umesh Katti Shashikala Jolle Ballari 1 Anand Singh Bengaluru Urban 7 R. Ashoka C. N. Ashwath Narayan V. Somanna S. T. Somashekhar Byrati Basavaraj K. Gopalaiah Munirathna Bengaluru Rural 1 M. T. B. Nagaraj(MLC) Bidar 1 Prabhu Chauhan Chikkaballapura 1 K. Sudhakar Chitradurga 1 B. Sriramulu Dakshina Kannada 1 S. Angara Dharwad 1 Shankar Patil Gadag 1 C. C. Patil Haveri 2 Basavaraj Bommai B. C. Patil Koppal 1 Halappa Achar Mandya 1 Narayana Gowda Shivamogga 2 K. S. Eshwarappa Araga Jnanendra Tumakuru 2 J. C. Madhu Swamy B. C. Nagesh Udupi 2 V. Sunil Kumar Kota Srinivas Poojary(MLC) Uttara Kannada 1 Shivaram Hebbar Total 30
See also Karnataka Legislative Assembly Karnataka Legislative Council 2018 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election 2023 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election Third Yediyurappa ministry Second Siddaramaiah ministry Basavaraj Bommai
References