Karnataka polls: Who will be chief minister? Siddaramaiah or Shivakumar?

As the Congress readies to take power in Karnataka after a hard-fought election, another battle is in the offing: for the post of chief minister.

Both former chief minister Siddaramaiah, who once was with the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S), and DK Shivakumar, the state party chief, are aspirants for the job.

Siddaramaiah, 75, has already put forward his claim – through his son Yathindra Siddaramaiah.

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Yathindra Siddaramaiah said his father should be chief minister “for the sake of Karnataka,” he told the media in Bengaluru.

“As a son, definitely I would like to see him as a chief minister. But as a resident of the state, his last regime saw good governance. This time also, if he becomes Chief Minister, the corruption and misrule of the BJP rule will be corrected by him,” he added.

An NDTV survey during the election campaign showed that Siddaramaiah was the most popular choice for the next Karnataka chief minister

Rival aspirants

He was first elected to the Karnataka assembly in 1983. In 1994, Siddaramaiah became deputy chief minister as part of a Janata Dal government.

He was later expelled from the JD-S after a clash with party its leader and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda. He joined the Congress in 2008 and became chief minister after the 2013 Karnataka elections.

Shivakumar, who is 61, is also a known aspirant for the chief minister’s post. He is one of the wealthiest politicians in Karnataka, media reports said.

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The prominence of “DKS” rose in 2019 when he tried and failed to salvage the Congress-Janata Dal Secular coalition government, which collapsed after the mass defection of MLAs from both parties.

Shivakumar has always been a Congressman, since his first electoral victory in 1989.

But Shivakumar faces several corruption cases and even spent time in Delhi’s Tihar Jail before being granted bail.