Making Siddaramaiah a CM may have distanced the Vokkaligas, but making Shivakumar the deputy chief minister may compensate for all the negatives

 Shamsher Chandel          

New Delhi: As Karnataka prepares for the swearing-in ceremony of the new chief minister Siddaramaiah let’s have a look at what went in his favour rather than DK Shivakumar, who ultimately had to make do with the position of deputy chief minister of the state.

75-year-old Siddaramaiah will become the CM for the second time. Earlier he held the office from 2013 to 2018. DK Shivakumar is relatively younger. At 61, he definitely fancies himself at the top in the future.

Siddaramaiah belongs to the Kuruba caste, the population of Kurubas in this southern state is 43 lakh or 7.1 per cent. Deputy CM-designate DK Shivakumar belongs to the OBC Vokaligga community and they are a powerful 8.29 per cent of the population of Karnataka. Naming him the CM, Congress never wanted to risk the alienation of other upper-caste Hindus in the state.

Making Siddaramaiah a CM may have distanced the Vokkaligas, but making Shivakumar the deputy chief minister may compensate for all the negatives.

Also, Shivakumar did get to keep the position of state party president and that makes him more powerful than Sidaramaiah at least in the party if not in the state.

Also, one cannot forget that Shivakumar’s rise in Karnataka politics has been tremendous. After all, after the 2013 elections, Sidaramaiah even refused to give him a ministerial berth in the first year.

What goes against Shivakumar are Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate cases which are about disproportionate assets that he has from known sources of income. There always remains a possibility of the central agencies going after him due to these cases. Notably, Shivakumar has already spent 50 days in Tihar jail in a money laundering case.

Net worth of the two leaders

 Siddaramaiah is one of the richest Congress leaders of Karnataka with moveable assets worth Rs 9.58 crore and immovable property worth Rs 9.43 crore. However, Shivakumar’s net worth is Rs 1,414 crore in 2023. This went up from Rs 873 crore as per the official affidavit he submitted to the election commission before the 2018 Vidhan Sabha polls.

Education

Siddaramaiah is a science graduate and later did law at Mysore University. He has 13 court cases pending against him. Shivakumar holds a post-graduate degree in political science from the Karnataka State Open University. He was the secretary of the students’ union during his college days.