If there is any Congress leader who has been associated with the party through thick and thin, it is DK Shivakumar. Seen as the party’s troubleshooter and go-to man, he was put in charge of the Karnataka unit of the Congress, which was plagued by low morale and lack of fighting spirit.
Shivakumar’s crisis management skills came to the fore when he kept the herd together in 2002, when Congress’ Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh was facing a no-confidence motion. He hosted a contingent of Congress MLAs at a resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru. After a week, they were taken back to Mumbai for a trust vote, which Deshmukh won.
In 2017, when Congress strongman Ahmed Patel took on BJP chief Amit Shah for a Rajya Sabha seat from Gujarat, it was Shivakumar who hosted the party’s 44 MLAs. Patel won his seat, but by then Shivakumar had been raided by the Income Tax Department.
He ran his own video parlour, worked his way through the ranks, and became a student leader and then a junior minister in the S Bangarappa government in 1990. constituency, and lost. He fought Deve Gowda again in 1989 from Kanakapura and lost. In 1999, he defeated Gowda’s son HD Kumaraswamy in Sathanur. In 1999, Shivakumar became ‘Man Friday’ for Karnataka Congress chief and Deve Gowda’s arch-rival SM Krishna, who brought the Congress back to power. Krishna is now in BJP.
Shivakumar has won four times each from Kanakapura and Sathanur, and has earned the title of ‘Kanakpura Bande (Rock)’.
In 2018, Shivakumar put aside his political differences and worked smoothly with Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy to set up a Congress-JD(S) coalition government. He was sent to jail on September 20, 2019, on charges of having disproportionate assets and being booked in several cases. He got bail after 50 days.
His brother DK Suresh is the only member of the Lok Sabha from Karnataka and represents the Bangalore Rural constituency.
Married to Usha, he has two daughters – Aishwarya and Aabharan – and a son, Akash. Aishwarya, who is married to Amartya, son of late coffee baron VG Siddhartha, runs Global Academy of Technology, an engineering college owned by Shivakumar. Amartya’s mother Malvika Hegde, daughter of SM Krishna, runs Cafe Coffee Day after her husband’s death. Shivakumar is one of the richest politicians in India and according to the affidavit filed by him, the movable and immovable assets of his family were valued at Rs 1,139 crore.
Shivakumar’s crisis management skills came to the fore when he kept the herd together in 2002, when Congress’ Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh was facing a no-confidence motion. He hosted a contingent of Congress MLAs at a resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru. After a week, they were taken back to Mumbai for a trust vote, which Deshmukh won.
In 2017, when Congress strongman Ahmed Patel took on BJP chief Amit Shah for a Rajya Sabha seat from Gujarat, it was Shivakumar who hosted the party’s 44 MLAs. Patel won his seat, but by then Shivakumar had been raided by the Income Tax Department.
He ran his own video parlour, worked his way through the ranks, and became a student leader and then a junior minister in the S Bangarappa government in 1990. constituency, and lost. He fought Deve Gowda again in 1989 from Kanakapura and lost. In 1999, he defeated Gowda’s son HD Kumaraswamy in Sathanur. In 1999, Shivakumar became ‘Man Friday’ for Karnataka Congress chief and Deve Gowda’s arch-rival SM Krishna, who brought the Congress back to power. Krishna is now in BJP.
Shivakumar has won four times each from Kanakapura and Sathanur, and has earned the title of ‘Kanakpura Bande (Rock)’.
In 2018, Shivakumar put aside his political differences and worked smoothly with Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy to set up a Congress-JD(S) coalition government. He was sent to jail on September 20, 2019, on charges of having disproportionate assets and being booked in several cases. He got bail after 50 days.
His brother DK Suresh is the only member of the Lok Sabha from Karnataka and represents the Bangalore Rural constituency.
Married to Usha, he has two daughters – Aishwarya and Aabharan – and a son, Akash. Aishwarya, who is married to Amartya, son of late coffee baron VG Siddhartha, runs Global Academy of Technology, an engineering college owned by Shivakumar. Amartya’s mother Malvika Hegde, daughter of SM Krishna, runs Cafe Coffee Day after her husband’s death. Shivakumar is one of the richest politicians in India and according to the affidavit filed by him, the movable and immovable assets of his family were valued at Rs 1,139 crore.