Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 27: The power struggle within the Karnataka Congress legislature party over the leadership issue seems to be taking a turn for the worst with both the chief minister and the deputy chief minister’s camps taking hardened stand on the issue creating nightmarish problems for the party high command to resolve the crisis.
While the deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar, who has been staking his claim for the top post, on Thursday made his stand clear with a cryptic remark on X “Word power is world power,” the chief minister Siddaramaiah’s supporters held a meeting at his residence and decided to swing into action if party boss Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi ‘give even the slightest hint’ his rival Shivakumar, popularly known as DKS could be promoted for the top job.
And if the party still insists on a new chief minister, they will be presented with a list of alternatives, sources said, to prevent DKS being promoted as the chief minister, the move which underscores the deep rift between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar, who have been squabbling over the top job since the Congress’ big 2023 election win.
One alternative could be Home Minister G Parameshwara, a Siddaramaiah-backer and influential Dalit leader, who raised eyebrows with his sudden out-of-turn remark recently, “I have always been in the race for chief minister’s post.”
Posting a message on X, Mr Shivakumar apparently was reminding the party high command about, what he claimed, the “secret deal” reached between “five-six of us” over power-sharing at the time of the formation of the Congress ministry in the state in May, 2023. He said, “Keeping one’s word is the greatest strength in the world!” He further said, “The biggest force in the world was to keep one’s word… Be it a judge, president, or anyone else, including myself, everyone has to walk the talk. Word power is world power.”
The message appears to be directed at the Chief Minister and his party bosses in New Delhi and reminding central leaders of the party on the much talked about power-sharing pact that was arrived when the party came to power back in 2023.
On Tuesday (November 25), Mr Shivakumar made the first direct reference to the “power sharing pact” in the ruling Congress. In what appears to be a desperate move, the KPCC chief has been holding parleys with loyalists of the Chief Minister. He had met Ministers B. Z. Zameer Ahmed, Satish Jarkiholi, K.J. George, and many MLAs who are identified as close to the Chief Minister.
Sources claimed that Mr Shivakumar has told the loyal ministers to Mr Siddaramaiah that they would be “looked after well” after he become the Chief Minister and sought their support to secure the top post.
As the developments around the leadership issue are dragging on denting the image of the government, the high command, including Mr Kharge and Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are expected to hold talks with Mr Siddaramaiah and Mr Shivakumar to resolve power-sharing issue amicably. Mr Siddaramaiah’s camp is also on high alert and is currently on “wait-and-watch” mode but ready to descend on Delhi and pressure the party into retaining their man in the top job and put a full-stop to the “confusion.”
In case the high command still go for a change in the leadership, they would be pressing for anointing one of Siddaramaiah’s supporters to replace him instead of DKS and in the list the home minister G Parameshwara’s name is learnt to be at the top. This strategy was finalised Wednesday at a meeting led by PWD Minister Satish Jarkiholi, also a Siddaramaiah loyalist, who said the party’s Delhi leaders need to settle this issue.
Jarkiholi, who is believed to be eying for the top party job in the state to replace DKS, has also met the deputy chief minister but neither side revealed details of the meeting. Kharge and the Gandhis are expected to sit down on Thursday or Friday to thrash out this problem. An exasperated party boss had told reporters on Wednesday, “Sonia ji, Rahul, and I will fix it…” The plan is to summon Siddaramaiah and DKS to Delhi after the Kharge-Gandhis meet.
The Siddaramaiah-DKS feud broke after the Congress’ 2023 election win. The party opted for the former as its new chief minister, a role the latter felt he deserved after orchestrating the victory.
Instead, he was made the deputy and allowed to remain as the party’s state unit boss; the Congress’ ‘one man, one post’ rule was bent to allow this. There was also talk then of an ‘agreement’ – another not-so-cryptic DKS remark was about a “secret deal between five or six of us” – that would see Siddaramaiah stand down midway through the five-year term.
That midway point passed last week. Since then DKS-backing lawmakers have been ramping up pressure on the party to effect that switch. DKS himself has made no secret of wanting the job; he seemed to underline this last week by hinting at quitting as the Karnataka Congress boss.
The power struggle at the top has also been re-cast as a Vokkaliga vs Ahinda political face-off after a high-level meeting at the CM’s residence on Thursday. The core agenda was to counter the ‘Vokkaliga chief minister’ narrative seen as gaining momentum, particularly after Nirmalanandanatha Swamiji, a noted religious leader from that community, publicly backed Shivakumar and praised his loyalty and long service to the party.
‘Loyalty’ and ‘long service to the Congress’ have also been raised by DKS’ supporters as they pile pressure on the party’s central leadership to swap Siddaramaiah for their man. All of that support, Siddaramaiah’s camp believes, has intensified the narrative of a dominant community – the Vokkaligas and Lingayats are Karnataka’s biggest caste groups – being denied a leadership role, particularly since the latter had the BJP’s BS Yediyurappa to fly their flag.
And that support also set up the Vokkaliga vs Ahinda battlespace. Ahinda refers to a multi-group voter base – of minorities, backward classes, and Dalits – that has consistently backed Siddaramaiah, allowing him to claim the title of a ‘mass leader’ and circumvent the state’s otherwise bi-polar caste landscape, i.e., the Vokkaliga-Lingayat divide.
That support is a big reason why the Congress tends to back Siddaramaiah; the volume of votes he can influence across the southern states makes him a valuable electoral resource. DKS hails from the Vokkaliga community and was credited with directing a large chunk of those votes away from the Janata Dal (Secular) to the Congress’ pocket in 2023. After orchestrating that win, DKS expected to be appointed the next chief minister. But a majority of the elected MLAs wanted Siddaramaiah, courtesy the Ahinda umbrella.