Why would it be fatal for Congress to ditch Siddaramaiah?

New Delhi: After the thumping victory in Karnataka Assembly polls, supporters of both Karnataka Congress president D K Shivakumar and former chief minister Siddaramaiah have started lobbying for their respective leaders. 

There is also a twist in the tale with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge insisting that the next chief minister will be decided by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. It clearly means that he too is in the fray.

His statement has visibly put the Congress high command in a dilemma. It must consider several factors before deciding on the candidate.

Siddaramaiah is a mass leader with considerable hold over legislators and party leaders. He showed a glimpse of his popularity on his 75th birthday at Davanagere when tens and thousands of people attended the celebrations and caused almost a seven-hour traffic jam on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border.

The party leadership should also keep in mind that Siddaramaiah is the one who single handedly brought down the Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress coalition government in 2019.

He was consistently feeling sidelined in that arrangement and had vehemently opposed any tie-up with his former party. Even former Congress president Rahul Gandhi blamed the vested interests within the party for the fall of the coalition government, saying their greed won while democracy, honesty and the people of Karnataka lost.

In 2013 when Congress won the assembly elections, Siddaramaiah was the unanimous choice of legislators despite being an outsider. He had trounced veteran Kharge in the voting that took place in the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting. Kharge has been nursing a grudge against him ever since. He is sensing a chance now to get back at Siddaramaiah.

There is no denying that Shivakumar had pumped in a lot of resources in these elections despite facing a probe by the central investigation agencies in the disproportionate assets case. He also sees this victory as a golden opportunity to become the chief minister.

But he needs to remember that a clash with Siddaramaiah will not enable him to rule the state with a free hand. There will be multiple problems and the challenge for the new Congress dispensation would be to guarantee a maximum number of seats for the party from the state. It must be a united front otherwise the Congress will derail from the track at the beginning itself. Besides he is young and has enough time on his side.

By electing Kharge as the Karnataka chief minister, the Congress leadership will have to start the painstaking exercise of finding his successor. It took five years for the grand old party to get a full-time president after Rahul Gandhi quit the post in May 2019 and Sonia Gandhi steered the organisation till October 2022 despite ill-health.

The organisational elections in the Congress saw drama at every stage as Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot refused to take over the baton of the grand old party followed by the entry of motormouth Digvijaya Singh in the fray before the high command finally zeroed in on Kharge. The Gandhis would not be inclined to see a repeat of those developments in the immediate future.

Thus, it seems Siddaramaiah is a safe bet for the Congress at this juncture though with a rider that he should ensure maximum seats for the party from Karnataka in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.