Siddaramaiah’s elevation was a done deal for anyone who read right the sociopolitical import of the May 13 poll outcome in Karnataka. The state was delivered to the Congress by the Ahinda caste alliance, the architect of which was the Kuruba strongman who will hold the chief minister’s office for the second time after his 2013-18 stint.
Popular among his supporters as “Ahinda Nayaka,” Siddaramaiah had entered the contest as the state’s most popular, electorally active leader. He stood taller among his peers as his former boss, the Janata Dal (Secular)’s HD Deve Gowda, and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Lingayat headman, BS Yediyurappa, were restricted by their advancing years; the former at 89 and the latter 80. Little surprise therefore that the electorate flocked around the relatively younger yet 76-year-old former CM fighting, by his own admission, his last poll battle.
The brinkmanship for the CM’s office in the Congress began soon after the results were out. The protracted tussle threatened to vitiate the atmospherics required for putting the new regime in place. Reason prevailed eventually over emotion and ambition when DK Shivakumar, a quintessential apparatchik who led the party’s state unit to victory could be persuaded to be Siddaramaiah deputy by his fellow Kannadiga, Mallikarjun Kharge. As much of a clincher was a late night call Sonia Gandhi made to DK.
Now the Congress’s national president, Kharge had similarly ceded the legislature party leadership to Siddaramaiah in 2013 despite his strong claim as party old-guard and state unit chief from the Dalit community. A lateral 2006 entry to the Congress from the JD(S), the CM-designate romped home also for his administrative experience in successive Janata Party/Janata Dal/Congress regimes, not to speak of his perceived value in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as the amulet of the formidable SC/ST/OBC/Muslim social combine called Ahinda.
That did not, by any stretch of imagination, mean that DK lacked the curriculum vitae for the CM’s office. The pending CBI/ED/IT cases against him were a deterrent. But, at 61, he had age on his side besides the equity he could legitimately claim in the party’s wholesome victory. Credit doubtless went to him for his Vokkaliga community’s vote shift to the Congress that reduced the JD(S) to a rump in southern Karnataka. But for the disciplined tango he danced with Siddaramaiah, his bête noire of sorts, in the run-up to the May 10 polling, the Congress wouldn’t have logged the pan-Karnataka presence which forever eluded the BJP.
For these very reasons, DK knew perhaps that by not budging from his first claim to be the CM (in an agreed but not publicly announced 2.5-year-each rotational arrangement) he’d be cutting the nose to spite the face. As one with a relatively longer career ahead, he understood well that to keep power in Karnataka, the Congress has to keep intact the social alliance that’s the work of his teamsmanship with Siddaramaiah. If the latter– after his failed effort in the 2018 elections which threw up a hung house — could secure an Ahinda-Linga (SC, ST, OBC, Muslim, Lingayat) tie-up, DK brought to the grass-roots coalition the Vokkaliga vote held captive for decades by the Gowda family.
The rare social engineering stonewalled the BJP’s late Hindutva pitch spearheaded by its national leadership. Its decision to scrap the four per cent Muslim quota and the Bajrang Bali spin it gave to the Congress’s promise of reining in the often volatile Bajrang Dal, harmed rather than help the saffron party. On the back of a reversely polarised minority vote, the Congress made huge gains at the JD(S)’s cost in the Mysuru region. That at once earned DK the mass appeal he needed to divest the Gowda clan of their pre-eminence in the Vokkaliga community.
A pointer to his enhanced organisational heft is the Congress high command’s decision to let him continue as the party’s state unit president besides being its sole deputy CM in Karnataka. By similar token, the rotational chief ministership hasn’t been formally announced in order not to dilute Siddaramaiah’s authority as the first among the equals in the new regime. The understanding reportedly is to ‘review’ the arrangement after the 2024 parliamentary polls.
The informal compact hasn’t worked out in Chattisgarh. It’s anybody’s guess whether it’ll pan out any differently in Karnataka. For the present: All’s well that ends well!
vinodsharma@hindustantimes.com