Bengaluru, May 19 (UNI): Noted for his command over wide sections of the society and among his party legislators, Karnataka CM-designate Siddaramaiah is a special politician, who boasts of having rich administrative experience, and distinction of presenting 13 budgets — six of them as chief minister.
But once down on the coveted chair after taking the oath of office from Karnataka Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot here on Saturday, he may hardly have any time to bask in his past glories.
The ‘Kurubura Sardara’ (Leader of Shepherd community) will have big tasks cut out. The immediate task would be to shepherd the party to secure a good number of Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 general elections.
If he succeeds in improving the party’s tally from one Lok Sabha seat to more than a dozen in Karnataka, Siddaramaiah may not be credited, but if he fails to deliver, he would be trampled by his rival DK Shivakumar, who would not wait long in demanding an upgrade from the Deputy Chief Minister’s slot.
Another tricky challenge facing Siddaramaiah is the task of cabinet formation and allocation of portfolios, where he has to carefully tread the fine line in not antagonising caste and regional sentiments of party legislators, and senior ministerial aspirants like MB Patil and G Parameshwara, who desired for the Dy CM’s slot, but missed out due to party high command’s decision to have only one such post.
Another challenge is to give adequate representation to Lingayat legislators in his ministry as the community helped elect 30-odd Congress legislators in the just-concluded assembly election. This has rarely happened for the Congress since the unceremonious removal of Lingayat strongman Veerendra Patil from CM’s post by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1990s.
Testing times also await Siddaramaiah in terms of allocation of portfolios, where he has to be cautious not to rub salt on Shivakumar’s wounds, after the latter was forced to put on hold his chief ministerial aspirations for now. At the same time, the situation could be tricky, as both of them would like to give ministerial berths to their loyalists. And it goes without saying, even AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge and the Gandhis would chip in with their set of choices.
Once getting the cabinet right, Siddaramaiah faces the most difficult task of delivering five guarantees – free rice and electricity, free travel for women, and direct cash transfers to women, unemployed graduates and diploma-holders – that were made in the party’s manifesto.
According to Congressman Professor G Radhakrishnan’s estimates, it would cost the state exchequer Rs 50,000 crores annually. So, for obvious economic reasons, Siddaramaiah could issue riders to deliver the guarantees to the most deserving poor, instead of the entire 6.5 crore population of the state.
In the absence of deft manoeuvring, any such filtering may end up riling those who miss out on the benefits. And this could have an impact in Lok Sabha and subsequent elections. So, this would be a test of the socio-politico astuteness of Siddaramaiah and he needs to use all his financial acumen for providing money for the same.
Siddaramaiah also faces the challenge of dusting off the acronyms of being anti-Hindutva and biased towards Kurubas, which he had earned in his previous tenure as the chief minister from 2013 to 2018.
It also remains to be seen how Siddaramaiah tackles the reservation policy related to Muslims, Vokkaligas and Lingayats. This a very dicey matter as restoration of Muslim reservation, as promised by the party in the run-up to assembly election, could annoy Lingayats and Vokkaligas, who might miss on a two percent reservation increase.
All eyes also will be fixed on his equation with Shivakumar, who reportedly accused Siddaramaiah of pulling down the Congress-JDS coalition government during his meetings with party leadership in the run-up to the announcement of the next chief minister.
Any downswing in the relationship between the two heavyweights, could have an adverse effect in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. So, being a chip of an old block the onus lies on Siddaramaiah to keep his deputy Shivakumar in good humour.
