Siddaramaiah in Delhi amid demands for KPCC chief DK Shivakumar's replacement

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah will camp in Delhi on Wednesday and Thursday to share his inputs on the latest political developments with the AICC leadership as the government nears completion of two years since coming to power.

The chief topic of discussion, however, will be the choice of party’s nominees for the four Legislative Council seats. Sources say CM may also discuss possible leaders who could succeed DK Shivakumar as Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president. The CM is keen to have a loyalist at the KPCC helm.

Whether the CM will discuss the names for KPCC president’s post with the party leadership or not, Public Works Minister Satish Jarkiholi and Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre have emerged front runners. Jarkiholi, an influential ST leader from Belagavi district, has been quite vocal about his desire to lead the party’s state unit. Khandre, a soft-spoken leader from the dominant Lingayat community from the Hyderabad-Karnataka region, is also in the race.


Quite a few leaders have been after Shivakumar, pointing fingers at him for fomenting troubles for them in the party, and one of such critics is Cooperation Minister KN Rajanna. It is no secret that Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar lead rival camps in the party though they display a show of unity in public.

A few diehard Siddaramaiah loyalist ministers have been throwing their weight behind their leader seeking to torpedo any chances of a CM’s change midterm in line with a rumoured deal between Shivakumar and the party leadership. The nine-time MLA and a Vokkaliga strongman Shivakumar was deeply upset when the party passed him over for the CM’s post two years ago. The party, however, comforted him with a combo deal of Pradesh Congress chief’s post and Dy CM position. It emerged at that time of a deal between him and the party that he would succeed Siddaramaiah after the first 30 months.

Shivakumar, sources say, does not want to give up the party chief post and is said to have conveyed the same to the leadership. He is also said to have told his bosses that if he had to give up, he would do so only after turning in another round of impressive performance in the upcoming polls to taluk and zilla panchayats.

In recent days, Shivakumar has been fighting his foes both within the party and outside, and mostly on his own. In Siddaramaiah’s case, he has a few committed followers who do all the talking for their leader.