Karnataka’s longest-serving chief minister, Siddaramaiah, signed out on Thursday afternoon, making way for a man who is equally credited for bringing the Congress back to power in 2023 and is also the party’s principal troubleshooter and moneybag. But Mr Siddaramaiah’s final post as chief minister and one of his last actions in office are a clear indication that he has a lot more fight left in him. His acceptance of the caste survey report on Wednesday after the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes hurriedly finalised it has queered the pitch for the incoming chief minister, D.K. Shivakumar, whose Vokkaliga community along with the Lingayats had opposed the findings of the first such exercise. As a legislator, Mr Siddaramaiah can be expected to keep the pressure on the new chief minister to implement the report — an agenda that has the backing of the Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi. A minefield has thus been laid out for Mr Shivakumar to navigate given the caste dynamics of Karnataka. Moreover, as the most seasoned Congressman minding a state, Mr Shivakumar will be expected to deliver in a hurry as the Congress is facing the daunting prospect of defending three of the four states it has in the next two years.

In the course of the change in chief ministership, the Congress, once again, paid scant attention to the poor optics emanating from the struggle for power between its two titans that has simmered for the entire duration of this government to date. The Bharatiya Janata Party has adopted the high command culture of the Congress. But the tight control the leadership — Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union home minister, Amit Shah — has on the party and the collective silence of the media on the inner dynamics of the saffron fold give it the semblance of a much more orderly organisation. The Congress, in comparison, comes across as a bunch of power-seeking satraps ever eager to pull the other down. But the recent developments in Karnataka and Kerala revealed that a seemingly weakened central leadership along with multiple power centres can manage to address the contradictions embedded within the high command and in the respective state units. Whether this ability to douse domestic fires in a democratic manner, albeit at a leisurely pace, helps the Congress improve its public image and function unitedly remains to be seen.