The Congress party has swept a clear majority with 136 seats in the 224-member Karnataka Assembly, and the big task on hand for the party leadership now is to choose the next chief minister. While there are many aspirants for the top post, the leading contenders are former chief minister and Kuruba strongman Siddaramaiah (75) and KPCC chief and Vokkaliga strongman D.K. Shivakumar (60).
While Siddaramaiah is a mass leader who holds sway over the ‘Ahinda’ (minorities, backward classes and Dalits) votebank of the Congress, Shivakumar the go-to man of the Gandhi family, who has bailed out his party at times of crises (shielding the Congress MLAs from being “poached” thrice) and has strived to strengthen the party at the grassroots ever since his elevation as the party chief in July 2020.
Both the leaders have fought a tough battle as the BJP central leadership had devised a strategy to keep them busy in their own constituencies.
In 2018, Siddaramaiah had lost Chamundeshwari, a constituency in Mysuru he had won five times, but managed to win Badami in Bagalkot with a wafer thin margin. This time, Siddaramaiah, fearing sabotage by detractors from within the party and outside, zeroed in on Varuna, the constituency in Mysuru currently held by his doctor son Yathindra and won with a margin of more than 14,000 votes after defeating BJP minister V. Somanna.
The BJP fielded fellow Vokkaliga and revenue minister R. Ashok to take on Shivakumar in his fiefdom as the contest had always been one-sided. The saffron party had hoped to keep Shivakumar busy in his own constituency just like it had succeeded in tying down Siddaramaiah to Varuna. But Shivakumar chose to tour the south Karnataka region even as his wife Usha managed his election campaign by going on a door-to-door campaign.
Even as the Congress party is yet to hold a legislature party to pick their leader, the party high command is sure to factor in the strengths of both the leaders before anointing one of them as the CM.
Siddaramaiah has earned the good will of people from the various “Bhagya” series of welfare schemes like free rice and milk to school children, and is the tallest Ahinda leader in the state. Shivakumar, who has for long been the CM-in-waiting, has been trying to get hold of the Vokkaliga belt in the Old Mysuru region that remains tilted in favour of the Janata Dal Secular and the Deve Gowda family. During the campaign, Shivakumar appealed to his community to help him become the chief minister just like they had helped Deve Gowda and his son Kumaraswamy become the chief ministers.
Shivakumar, an eight-time MLA who has served as a minister in the cabinets of S. Bangarapa, S.M. Krishna, Siddaramaiah and H.D. Kumaraswamy, is in the dock for alleged money laundering and facing a slew of ED and IT cases.
While the power tussle between the two leaders is no secret, the party leadership is expected to call truce by evolving a power sharing formula to pacify both factions.
