The ongoing war of words over ‘power sharing’ has tarnished the Congress’ spectacular victory in Karnataka. (PTI photo)
DK Shivakumar supporters already believe that the denial of the leader’s CM post has turned the Vokkaligas against the Congress. Others, however, feel that Lingayats, Muslims and Dalits are siding with Shivakumar and the Congress by not electing a deputy CM from their community.
Senior Congress cabinet minister and Lingayat face MB Patil’s statement denying any “power-sharing” formula between Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar has now become a hot potato for the high command, which is still enjoying Has been a massive election victory, about two weeks ago.
Patil told the media in Mysore that there was “no power-sharing agreement” between Siddaramaiah and the DKS and the former would continue as CM for the full five-year term.
Shivakumar’s younger brother and Bengaluru Rural Congress MP DK Suresh hit back at Patil, asking him to concentrate on his work.
According to reliable sources, a steadfast DKS agreed to hand over the CM post to Siddaramaiah only after the Gandhi family assured him that he would be the CM for the last 30 months of the current 60-month term. DKS has made it clear that he will agree if he is made the sole deputy CM. With no other option, the high command had to agree. No one is talking about it publicly for obvious reasons.
Such opaque power-sharing arrangements have caused much confusion, and have divided the party vertically. Ahead of the Karnataka election results, the Congress was planning to appoint one deputy CM each from the Vokkaliga, Lingayat, Muslim and Dalit communities.
Patil and DKS are contemporaries and rivals in the Congress. Patil won his first assembly election (a by-election after his father’s death) in 1990 at the age of 25. He has so far won six assembly and one parliamentary elections. Patil has held the important portfolios of Water Resources and Home Affairs in the past. He was the President of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) in the recently concluded elections and is credited with winning the BJP bastion Kittur region for the Congress. He is instrumental in engineering the defection of senior Lingayat leaders to the BJP like former Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar before the elections.
The Congress has won almost all Lingayat-dominated districts in the state, and with a 16% vote share in the party, the community was expecting at least one deputy CM post.
Since the Congress has had an uneasy relationship with the Lingayats over the past 50 years, party insiders feel the Congress leadership should be extra careful and sensitive towards them.
Lingayats play a decisive role in 14 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka. The Congress will have to retain its vote to compete with the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Important Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and local body elections are also due, and the Siddaramaiah government is likely to hold them in the next six months.
DK Shivakumar, an eight-time MLA from the Vokkaliga caste, claims that he trounced the Janata Dal-Secular (JDS) in the Gowda bastion in the recent assembly elections. But their sphere of influence is confined to three to four districts of the old Mysore region. The Vokkaligas account for about 12% of the population and are confined to only 10 districts in the region.
Lingayats are a pan-Karnataka community except in the two districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi. The old Mysore region also has a sizeable number of Lingayats and the Congress needs them to win here too.
CM Siddaramaiah has ahinda or hold on minorities, backward classes and dalits across the state. AICC President M Mallikarjun Kharge has also consolidated the Dalit votes of the party. Patil and other leaders like Shamanur Shivashankarappa, Eshwar Khandre, Laxman Savadi, Jagadish Shettar, Lakshmi Hebbalkar control the Lingayat vote. Besides DKS, the Congress has other Vokkaliga leaders like Krishna Byre Gowda, TB Jayachandra, Cheluvarayaswamy, Dr MC Sudhakar and others.
DKS supporters already believe that the denial of the CM post to the leader has turned the Vokkaligas against the Congress. However, others feel that Lingayats, Muslims and Dalits are siding with the DKS and the Congress by not electing a deputy CM from their community.
These leaders are fed up with each other dominating and want the high command to rein in those who are speaking out of turn. The ongoing war of words over “power-sharing” has tarnished the Congress’ resounding victory in Karnataka.