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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Fractured Crown

Between Siddaramaiah’s grip on power and Shivakumar’s restless ambition, the Karnataka Congress is trapped in a succession spiral. Karnataka Karnataka today has two chief ministers - one by office, the other by expectation. The power tussle between Siddaramaiah and his deputy, D.K. Shivakumar, has slipped so completely into the open that the Congress’s ritual denials sound like political farce. A whispered ‘understanding’ after the 2023 victory that each would get the CM’s post after...

Fractured Crown

Between Siddaramaiah’s grip on power and Shivakumar’s restless ambition, the Karnataka Congress is trapped in a succession spiral. Karnataka Karnataka today has two chief ministers - one by office, the other by expectation. The power tussle between Siddaramaiah and his deputy, D.K. Shivakumar, has slipped so completely into the open that the Congress’s ritual denials sound like political farce. A whispered ‘understanding’ after the 2023 victory that each would get the CM’s post after two-and-a-half years has hardened into a public confrontation between a chief minister determined to finish five years and a deputy increasingly unwilling to wait. The recent breakfast meeting between the two men at Siddaramaiah’s residence was presented as a truce where the ‘high command’ was invoked as the final arbiter. “There are no differences between us,” Siddaramaiah insisted, twice for emphasis. Few were convinced and soon, Shivakumar was again hinting darkly at change. For weeks, Shivakumar’s loyalists have been holding meetings, mobilising legislators and making pilgrimages to Delhi to get the Congress high command to honour its promise. They insist that the Congress leadership agreed to a rotational chief ministership in 2023 and that November 2025 was always meant to mark Shivakumar’s ascent. The high command, for its part, has perfected the art of strategic vagueness by neither confirming nor denying the pact. This suggests that the Congress does not merely hesitate to act against Siddaramaiah, but increasingly lacks the capacity to do so. From the outset of his second innings, Siddaramaiah has given no signal of easing aside. As he approaches January 2026, poised to overtake D. Devaraj Urs as Karnataka’s longest-serving chief minister, the symbolism is unmistakable. The mantle of social justice politics that Urs once embodied now firmly sits on Siddaramaiah’s shoulders. And it is this social coalition that shields him. His fortress is AHINDA - minorities, backward classes and Dalits. Leaked figures from the unreleased caste census suggest that these groups together approach or exceed two-thirds of the state’s population. Lingayats and Vokkaligas, once electorally dominant, are rendered numerical minorities in this arithmetic. Siddaramaiah governs not merely as a Congress leader, but as the putative custodian of Karnataka’s demographic majority. That claim is reinforced through policy. Minority scholarships have been revived, contractor quotas restored, residential schools expanded. More than Rs. 42,000 crore has been earmarked for Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Kurubas, his own community, have been pitched for Scheduled Tribe status, with careful assurances that their elevation will not disadvantage others. DK Shivakumar brings organisational muscle, financial clout and control over the Vokkaliga heartland. In electoral campaigns, these are formidable assets. But in a confrontation with a leader who embodies a 60–70 percent social coalition, they are blunt instruments. The Congress high command understands this equation, even if it publicly pretends otherwise. It also remembers, uneasily, what Siddaramaiah did the last time his authority was constrained. In 2020, when the Congress–JD(S) coalition collapsed after 16 MLAs defected to Mumbai,13 of them hailed from Siddaramaiah’s camp. At the time, he held the post of coordination committee chairman. Instead, he emerged as the principal beneficiary of collapse, returning as Leader of the Opposition with a tighter grip on the party. If the Congress high command could not punish him then, it is doubtful it can coerce him now. Shivakumar’s predicament is thus more tragic than tactical. He is not battling a rival alone, but an entire political structure built to outlast him. The promised coronation looks increasingly like a mirage drifting just ahead of a man condemned to keep walking. For the Congress, the cost of this paralysis is already visible. A government elected on guarantees and governance is consumed by succession. The party’s authority is dissolving while its factions harden. The Congress returned to power in Karnataka after years in the wilderness, only to re-enact the same leadership dysfunction that has crippled it elsewhere. Regardless of whether Siddaramaiah survives this storm, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Congress cannot survive the slow corrosion of its command in one of the few states it holds today.

Debutant Shreejaya Chavan enters dynastic politics

Debutant Shreejaya Chavan enters dynastic politics

Mumbai: The BJP has fielded Mungantiwar and Mihir Kotecha from Chandrapur and Mulund constituencies respectively. Both of them had lost Lok Sabha elections. It is being considered that the party has expressed confidence in them while partly rectifying the mistakes made during Lok Sabha ticket allocation.


Apart from Shreejaya Chavan and Nitesh Rane, the party has also fielded Santosh Danve, son of former union minister Raosaheb Danve, from Bhokardan constituency in Marathwada region. On the backdrop of the Maratha quota stir, it needs to be seen as to what effect this change makes on the voting pattern.


Interestingly, the party hasn’t changed candidates from the constituencies where there were rumours that the party would give a new face. Even in the Kalyan East constituency, where the sitting BJP MLA Ganpat Gaikwad is currently in jail for firing bullets in a police station, the party has fielded Ganpat’s wife Sulabha while putting to rest that the ticket will go to some other party worker from the constituency.


The party has repeated sitting MLAs Manda Mhatre from Belapur and Seema Hire from Nashik West. The speculations were high that Mhatre would not get yet another chance from the constituency owing to her age and because of the insulting treatment, she gave to former rival and now fellow MLA from the city Ganesh Naik. In Nashik also, the local party workers were against Hire. However, the party appears to have decided to go with the popular faces against the wishes of local units.


The same logic appears to have been repeated in Solapur where the party has repeated Vijaykumar Deshmukh and Subhash Deshmukh from Solapur North and Solapur South constituencies respectively. Both of the names were rejected by the local party units. Yet the party has decided in their favour.


In Pune also, the party has repeated candidates on three of the four assembly segments of the city and not announced the ticket for the fourth seat, Kasba Peth.


The list also includes Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar, fielded from the Vandre West seat, and senior party leader and Lok Sabha member Narayan Rane’s son Nitesh Rane, renominated from Kankavli constituency in coastal Sindhudurg.


Notably, Bawankule, a minister in the erstwhile Devendra Fadnavis-led government, was denied a ticket in the 2019 elections from the Kamthi constituency he had represented for three terms. He has been renominated from Kamthi.


The BJP has replaced the sitting MLAs from Chinchwad in Pune district, Kalyan East in Thane district, and Srigonda in Ahilyanagar district.


Perhaps the most high-profile candidate is Shreejaya Chavan, daughter of former Congress politician Ashok Chavan. She will make her electoral debut from the Bhokar constituency, represented by her father, in Nanded district.


The BJP has given Mahesh Baldi, an independent MLA from Uran in Navi Mumbai, a ticket for the November 20 polls.


MLC Ram Shinde is fielded from the Karjat Jamkhed constituency. Shinde will take on sitting MLA Rohit Pawar of NCP (SP), the grandson of Sharad Pawar.

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