- Saturday, March 01, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
It seems the Indian National Congress’s challenges are not reducing even after it humbled the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of prime minister Narendra Modi in the recent elections in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. While the party is cautiously approaching to resolve the problem of choosing either of two heavyweight leaders — DK Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah — as the next chief minister, fresh claims have started emerging from various caste groups in the state for the top post.
According to a report by NDTV, the All India Veershaiva Mahasabha, which represents the state’s dominant Lingayat community, has expressed interest in the top job, citing that as many 34 newly elected Congress lawmakers are from the community which has electorally played an influential role in Karnataka. The Lingayat votes have been a key support base for the BJP and their swing has been found to be a key factor that helped the Congress in this election.
The outfit, the president of which is 91-year-old Shamanuru Shivashankarappa who won this time to become the state’s oldest legislator, also wrote a letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge reminding the party how the Lingayats’ vote played a big role in helping the grand-old party return to power.
A claim has also come from the Dalit community. Supporters of veteran Congress leader and Karnataka’s former deputy chief minister and chief of the state’s Congress unit G Parameshwara have demanded that the Dalit leader be chosen for the chief minister’s position. A demonstration was held in Tumakuru, located about 70 kilometres from state capital Bengaluru, where placards reading “a Dalit should be CM” were displayed.
The growing demands for the chief minister’s post seems more like a pressure tactic as the Congress buys more time to choose between Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah to head the next government. Shivakumar, the chief of the Congress’s state unit, belongs to the influential Vokkaliga community while Siddaramaiah, a former chief minister, is Kuruba — a backward caste group. Kharge is also a leader from Karnataka and his Dalit roots ensured that the party appealed to a wide spectrum of voters in the state.
Meanwhile, in Delhi, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi held a closed-door meeting with Kharge on Tuesday (16) for almost half an hour, the Indian Express reported. It was also attended by senior Congress leader Randeep Surjewala, who was in charge of the party’s affairs in Karnataka and KC Venugopal, who has also been in charge of the state.
Shivakumar also reached New Delhi the same day as he is slated to meet the party’s top leadership to discuss government formation in Karnataka.
Speculation was rife over Shivakumar’s next steps after he skipped the meeting in the national capital where Siddaramiah had reached to meet with the top leaders. He wished the latter the best and said in an interview that he is not one who would rebel.
The Congress won 135 out of 224 seats in the Karnataka assembly elections, its best result since 1989 when it won 178 seats. The BJP won only 66 seats.
