Veteran leader Siddaramaiah will be the next chief minister of Karnataka while Pradesh Congress chief D K Shivakumar will be his deputy, the Congress Central leadership announced here on Thursday, ending five days of uncertainty over the leadership issue in the wake of the party’s resounding win in the Assembly elections in the southern state.
At a media briefing here after yet another joint meeting with Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar, Congress General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal and AICC in-charge of Karnataka Randeep Singh Surjewala said Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, after eliciting the views of newly-elected Congress MLAs and consulting members of the Gandhi family, decided that Siddaramaiah, a former chief minister, would be the new leader of the state Congress Legislature Party (CLP). He would be formally elected the CLP leader at a meeting of the MLAs in Bengaluru this evening.
Shivakumar would be the only deputy chief minister and would continue as the PCC chief until the next Lok Sabha elections. The new Cabinet would be sworn in at 12:30 am on Saturday. The new chief minister, deputy chief minister and a group of ministers would be sworn in on that day, Venugopal said, adding leaders of the like-minded political parties would also be invited to the swearing-in ceremony.
Asked if any power-sharing formula had been worked out between the two warring Karnataka leaders who were not ready to back down on their claim to the chief ministership, the AICC general secretary laughed and quipped; ”Power-sharing will be with the people of Karnataka.”
The statement is significant since there is speculation that Siddaramaiah will hold the post for 2.5 years and after that Shivakumar will take over as the chief minister. Shivakumar’s brother and Congress MP publicly stated that he was not happy with the decision of the high command. He said his brother had accepted the decision in the interest of the people of Karnataka.
It is learnt that former Congress President Sonia Gandhi played a pivotal role in convincing Shivakumar to accept the decision in the larger interest of the party and the people of the state.
Surjewala said the new Congress government in the state would fulfil the five guarantees it made to the people of the state. ”We will provide an honest, transparent, stable and accountable government to the state,” he added.
Seventy-five-year-old Siddaramaiah, also referred to by his nickname Siddu, has been the state’s chief minister from 2013 to 2018. He is considered a mass leader and is popular among all sections of society in general and a symbol of hope for the backward classes in particular. He was the Leader of the Opposition in the outgoing Assembly and discharged his task very effectively inside and outside the House.
Shivakumar, who started his political career in the early 1980s as a student leader, is considered a Congress trouble shooter who has been extensively used by the party whenever it has faced any crisis anywhere. He is credited with reviving the party in the state and bringing it back to power.