Siddaramaiah is next Karnataka CM, DK Shivakumar made to settle for Dy CM

The swearing-in ceremony is likely to be held on Saturday, May 20. The Gandhis along with other senior Congress leaders are expected to attend the ceremony

Ending five days of suspense and rounds of meetings, discussions, parleys and brainstorming, Congress today announced Siddaramaiah as the next Chief Minister of Karnataka and DK Shivakumar as his Deputy. The announcement was made by Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal in New Delhi today.

This will be Siddaramaiah’s second term as the CM of Karnataka. He had ruled the state from 2013 to 2018 before losing the state to BJP in 2018.

Nine times MLA, the 75-year-old veteran represented the Chamundeshwari constituency in Mysuru five times — in 1983 as an Independent, in 1985 on a Janata Party ticket, in 1994 and 2004 for the Janata Dal, and in 2006 for the Congress.

In 2008, he shifted to Varuna which is also in the Mysuru region, and registered an easy victory that he repeated in 2013.
In 2018, Siddaramaiah left the Varuna seat for his son S Yathindra and went on to contest from Chamundeshwari and Badami. He lost Chamundeshwari to JD(S) candidate G T Deve Gowda but he defeated BJP’s B Sriramulu to win Badami.

In 2023, Siddaramaiah won from the Varuna seat by a margin of 46,006 votes. He defeated BJP candidate V Somanna, an influential Lingayat leader of the state.
DK Shivakumar will continue as the Karnataka Congress President.

In the May 10 elections to the 224-member Karnataka Assembly, the Congress comfortably bagged the majority by winning 135 seats. BJP got 66 and the Janata Dal (Secular) won 19 seats.

Both Siddaramaiah, fondly referred to as Siddu and DK Shivakumar often referred to as DKS play a significant role in snatching the state from BJP. Hence the delay in announcing the name of the Chief Minister as both the political heavyweights did not budge from their stands. Neither were in the mood to back down from the top job.

It took a lot of convincing to make DKS finally agree for the second top post.
The swearing-in is likely to be held on Saturday, May 20.

Winning Karnataka added one more state to the list of Congress-ruled states in India. The other state where Congress is in power are Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh. Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh go to polls later this year.

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