The Congress is said to have come up with a formula under which the high command, chief minister-designate D.K. Shivakumar and outgoing chief minister Siddaramaiah will each select 11 members for the Karnataka cabinet, a balancing act inspired by similar engineering in Kerala where there were three contenders for the top post.
Shivakumar, who was elected leader of the Congress Legislature Party on Saturday, is scheduled to be sworn in as chief minister on June 3 after Siddaramaiah stepped down three years into his term at the instruction of the high command.
The 11:11:11 formula is expected to keep the Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah camps happy as they will have equal say in cabinet formation and later, neither group will be able to exert disproportionate influence.
“In the 34-member cabinet, including the chief minister, all three stakeholders will have an equal say in the selection of ministers. We believe the cabinet formation in Kerala has had a bearing on the Karnataka exercise. There will be no scope for complaints if both the leaders have the same number of loyalists in the cabinet,” a Congress source told The Telegraph.
In Kerala, there were three contenders for the chief minister’s post — former Opposition leader V.D. Satheesan, Alappuzha MP and AICC general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal and senior legislator Ramesh Chennithala. Despite Venugopal having the backing of the high command and the maximum number of MLAs, the leadership decided to pick Satheesan, who had the people’s support and
that of key ally IUML, as chief minister.
Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah will meet the party high command in Delhi on Monday to discuss the cabinet formation, sources said on Sunday.
However, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge told reporters in Bengaluru on Sunday that Shivakumar had not yet submitted the probable list of cabinet ministers, indicating that key decisions could be taken only after the June 3 swearing-in.
“The discussions on government formation are already underway, but no formal proposal on the appointment of ministers has been submitted so far. Once the proposal comes, discussions will be held on the number of ministers to be appointed, whether deputy chief ministers should be appointed, and whether important chairmanships should also be created,” Kharge said.
Lok Sabha Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has insisted on not only bringing in fresh faces but also giving larger representation to the Ahinda, the Kannada acronym for a coalition of the Alpasankhyataru (minorities), Hindulidavaru (backward classes) and Dalitaru (Dalits).
This is going to pose a huge challenge for Shivakumar, who belongs to the upper-caste Vokkaliga community.
Shivakumar had reservations about implementing the caste census report submitted by former State Commission for Backward Classes chairman K. Jayaprakash Hegde in 2025. Before stepping down as the chief minister, Siddaramaiah released the latest caste census report by State Backwards Classes Commission chairman K. Madhusudan Nayak. According to the latest report, Dalits, OBCs and Muslims constitute the largest social groups in the state, followed by Vokkaligas and Lingayats.
Balancing community representation will therefore be a tightrope walk for Shivakumar.