You can tell the Chief Minister is holding his cards to his chest while the noise about a possible shuffling of the top job gets louder. He has put it out there that he’ll have some words with the high command tomorrow. It’s a cautious stance before what is being seen as an important breakfast with DK Shivakumar in Bengaluru on Thursday, which has only upped the ante in the Karnataka Congress.
Political stakes in Karnataka Congress
Ever since the Congress put in two and a half years at the helm, the question of who should be running the show has been hard to put to rest. You have had DK Shivakumar’s people making no bones about their support for him, and then you have party workers who have made common cause with G Parameshwara.
That kind of back-and-forth makes you wonder about the stability of the message, especially when the party is looking at its to-do list for the legislature and the organisation. In the end, it will be the voters who see how this plays out in terms of how the government is run and the coalition is handled down the line.
Signals from Delhi and Bengaluru
Siddaramaiah was speaking after a get-together of sorts in New Delhi on Tuesday. The room included Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, Randeep Singh Surjewala, AICC’s KC Venugopal, and both the CM and the Deputy CM.
Venugopal would have you believe the conversation was all housekeeping – Rajya Sabha and Legislative Council elections and the like – and called the rest ‘speculation’. But Home Minister G. Parameshwara from Karnataka was more noncommittal, saying they don’t have a clear picture of what was said in the room yet.
Parameshwara put it down to Randeep Singh Surjewala’s trip to Bengaluru to set the record straight. How quickly Delhi and the state unit are on the same page is what we are waiting to see.
What Siddaramaiah said on Wednesday
He was at Vidhana Soudha on Wednesday to lay a wreath for Jawaharlal Nehru on the 62nd anniversary of his passing. When put to the test by reporters on the leadership front, he was brief: “We will talk about it tomorrow.”
He did take a moment to put in a word for the first Prime Minister. “After independence, he was our PM for 17 years and served the country. He was a socialist and a capitalist,” he said.
Then comes the meeting with DK Shivakumar on Thursday for breakfast at his place, ‘Kaveri’. People will be watching to see if any new lines are drawn in the sand on where the party is headed.
Official positions so far
The way the chips are down with the main players:
– KC Venugopal: It’s just ‘speculation’
– G. Parameshwara: We don’t have the details
– Siddaramaiah: I’ll make a statement tomorrow
Why the timing matters
This is a delicate time for the Congress in the state. Some clarity inside is needed to pick candidates for the road ahead, keep allies on side and push the legislative agenda.
It is also a litmus test for how the party deals with ambition in a big unit like this. If you let it look like you’re drifting, it saps morale; a firm hand can put things right and change the story.
What to watch next
There are two things to keep an eye on in Bengaluru. One is to see if the Thursday breakfast yields a common view on how to govern and who does what. Two, whether Surjewala can make the signals from Delhi and the state capital jibe.
In a nutshell:
– Expect a word from the top tomorrow
– There is still organisational work to be done
– The talk of a new leader won’t go away, come what may
Siddaramaiah has left us in the lurch for now. By deferring to tomorrow, he has made for an interesting day of politics in Karnataka, where you have to read between the lines.
