 "D K Shivakumar with Siddaramaiah")
A call from UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, who intervened on Wednesday evening to persuade Congress Karnataka unit chief D K Shivakumar to accept the party leadership’s formula, helped Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge resolve the Karnataka leadership tussle four days after the Congress registered a comprehensive win in the assembly polls.
But it was former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi’s clarity that Siddaramaiah better represented the values and issues the party plans to foreground for its 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the country, and Karnataka, that had the party decide in favour of the 75-year-old leader.
According to party sources, Rahul was convinced, more so after the Karnataka win, that the Congress should reclaim its standing as the party for the country’s poor, that it should send an unambiguous message of delivering on its twin promise of making public the caste census data, conducted during Siddaramaiah-led previous Congress government’s tenure and its five guarantees.
Siddaramaiah, from the shepherd community and the party’s original OBC face, who shaped the AHINDA (a Kannada acronym for SCs, STs, OBCs and minorities) social alliance, ticks all the boxes. Shivakumar will not only be the only deputy chief minister, but also hold key ministerial portfolios and continue as the party’s state unit chief until the Lok Sabha polls.
Siddaramaiah, a one-term chief minister who has presented 13 budgets with a good network down to the state’s tehsil-level bureaucracy, is better placed to roll out the Congress’ five guarantees. Siddaramaiah also received support from most of the 135 MLAs in a secret ballot that the party’s central observers conducted on May 14.
On Thursday afternoon, Congress General Secretary K C Venugopal announced the party’s decision. “Clearly, this election was poor versus rich in Karnataka. We would like to especially mention that the entire poor people of Karnataka stand with the Congress party and middle-class people also,” Venugopal said.
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The Siddaramaiah-led council of ministers will take oath on Saturday. Party sources said the decision was a win for Siddaramaiah as well as Shivakumar, who “didn’t surrender”. It was essential to signal to the Vokkaliga community, which backed the Congress in the Old Mysuru region, that their leader was treated with respect.
Party sources rejected speculation that its leadership has proposed a rotational chief ministership. Shivakumar later said, “In the larger interest of the party, I have agreed.”
However, the party jettisoning the multiple deputy CM formula upset aspirants. Senior leader G Parameshwara, 71, an aspirant for the deputy CM’s post, cautioned the party’s central leadership that if a deputy CM post was not given to a Dalit, there would be adverse reaction and trouble.
Party sources rejected speculation that its leadership has proposed a rotational chief ministership. Venugopal said the only power-sharing formula is to share the power with the people of Karnataka. “Ours is a democratic party; we believe in consensus and not dictatorship,” he said about the hectic discussions over the last few days. Shivakumar later said, “In the larger interest of the party, I have agreed.” Kharge tweeted a picture of the three together.
