Siddaramaiah, DK Sivakumar to pick 10 faces each for 30-member Karnataka Cabinet

Soon to be sworn in Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah is set to lead to 30 member Cabinet, reports say.

After the Congress' 136-seat decimation of the Opposition in Karnataka, the national party dealt with a leadership crisis in the state, placating KPCC President D K Shivakumar - the other option for the top job - ahead of the swearing in.

Reports say that the national party's leadership has authorised Siddaramaiah and Sivakumar to pick 10 candidates each for the Cabinet.


Saturday's swearing-in ceremoney will be witnessed by party brass, four Chief Ministers from Congress' allied states and a Trinamool Congress representative.

The Karnataka Cabinet has an upper limit of 34, with Sidda and Shivakumar picking 20, the Congress leadership reportedly picked faces for the remaining berths, leaving four-five vacant.

Siddaramaiah and Sivakumar are set to take their oaths as the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister, respectively, in the presence of Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Jharkhand Chief Ministers M K Stalin, Nitish Kumar and Hemant Soren. Nitish's deputy Tejashwi Yadav is also on the guest list.

Also present will be UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, AICC president Mallikarjuna Kharge and the Gandhi siblings Rahul and Priyanka.

Bengal CM and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, who offered an electoral quid pro quo with Congress "in its strongholds and ours" with two days of the Karnataka verdict, received a telephone invitation from Siddaramaiah.

She expressed her inability to go, but deputed MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar to be at the swearing-in. SP chief and ex-UP CM Akhilesh Yadav, who toed Mamata's line this week, is on the guest list, too.

Karnataka Rajya Sabha MP Syed Naseer Hussain, who oversaw the guest list, said invitations were sent "only to CMs of Congress-governed states and UPA partners", automatically excluding Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, Odisha's Naveen Patnaik, Delhi's Arvind Kejriwal, K Chandrashekar Rao of Telangana and Andhra's Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy.

Among the Congress Chief Ministers in attendance will be Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh's Bhupesh Baghel and Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu of Himachal Pradesh.

Other notable names invited to the swearing-in are NCP chief Sharad Pawar, ex-Maharashtra CM Udhhav Thackeray, NC chief Farooq Abdullah, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechuri and D Raja of CPI.

With inputs from TOI