The newly elected Congress lawmakers on Sunday unanimously approved a one-line resolution authorising party national president Mallikarjun Kharge to appoint the new Karnataka chief minister.
With P.C. Siddaramaiah and state unit president D.K. Shivakumar having thrown their hats into the ring, and enjoying almost equal support among the MLAs, the decision will now be taken in Delhi.
“The Congress Legislature Party unanimously resolves that AICC president is hereby authorised to appoint the new leader of the Congress Legislature Party,” said the one-line resolution, adopted after a meeting at a luxury hotel in Bangalore.
Central observers Sushil Kumar Shinde, Jitendra Singh and Deepak Babaria were at the meeting along with state Congress office-bearers and central general secretaries K.C. Venugopal and Randeep Surjewala.
Surjewala told reporters that Siddaramaiah had moved the resolution and Shivakumar and all others had supported it.
“The AICC president (Kharge) then instructed Venugopal and the three senior observers to take the individual opinion of each legislator. That process is going to start after dinner,” he said.
Venugopal said the process would be completed by Sunday night.
Vociferous supporters of Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar had earlier thronged the streets around their homes in Bangalore and the hotel where the legislature party had met, chanting slogans and displaying banners and placards. The police kept a watchful eye on them.
“DK, DK, DK,” Shivakumar’s supporters cried, while Siddaramaiah loyalists sought another term for him considering his track record as a people-friendly chief minister between 2013 and 2018.
Shivakumar had made his position known early in the day after visiting the Siddaganga Mutt in Tumkur near here. He spoke about his many sacrifices but denied any differences with Siddaramaiah.
“Some say that I have differences with Siddaramaiah, but let me make it clear that there are no differences between us,” he told reporters.
“I have sacrificed for the party on many occasions. I have stood with Siddaramaiah, sacrificing (my own interests). I fully cooperated with Siddaramaiah,” he added, apparently hinting that it was his turn now to occupy the top post.
The Shivakumar loyalists’ argument is that the state unit chief who leads a party to victory naturally becomes chief minister. In 2013, the decision had been left to the legislature party since the then state unit president, G. Parameshwara, had lost the election.
Priyank Kharge, Chittapur MLA-elect and chairman of the state Congress’s communications wing, told reporters: “It’s a good problem to have.”
He explained: “We have a lot of depth in leadership. So, obviously, it’s going to be a difficult choice to make. People have worked in different capacities over many years. So it’s a good problem to have. Anyway, we’ll figure it out – not an issue.”
Shivakumar has the support of his Vokkaliga community, including its religious leaders. There has been no chief minister from the community since Krishna.
Siddaramaiah’s supporters, including his son Yathindra, have been highlighting his reputation as an efficient administrator and his record of rolling out welfare programmes and upholding social justice and communal harmony during his first tenure.
“My father provided very good governance for five years. So, ideally, he should get another term,” Yathindra told reporters.
Shivakumar’s supporters stressed how their leader had been harassed and jailed in a money-laundering case for defending the party’s interests.
Shivakumar, the Congress’s principal troubleshooter for years, was targeted by the BJP after scuttling its efforts to prevent Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary, Ahmed Patel, from getting elected to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat in 2017.
Shivakumar had sequestered 44 Gujarat Congress MLAs at a holiday resort on the outskirts of Bangalore to prevent the BJP poaching on them. But while he was busy minding the MLAs, income-tax officials began raiding his premises, including his home.
Booked following the raids, Shivakumar had to spend more than 50 days in Delhi’s Tihar jail two years later.
Scorecard
The Congress has won 135 of the state’s 224 seats, with the BJP finishing a distant second with 66 and the Janata Dal Secular reduced to a minor player with 19.
The Congress lost the Jayanagar seat after a contentious recounting that gave a 17-vote win to the BJP late on Saturday night.
Congress ally Darshan Puttanniah of the Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha won from Melukote. Independents Puttaswamy Gowda and Latha Mallikarjun have extended unconditional support to the Congress, taking its effective tally to 138.
