Who is Siddaramaiah? All you need to know about new Karnataka CM who beat DK Shivakumar in race for top post
1 min read 18 May 2023, 06:56 AM ISTKarnataka's two chief ministerial aspirants Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar held separate meetings with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday as the party held hectic consultations to decide on who would lead the government in the southern state.
PremiumAfter several days of deliberation and debate, Congress leader Siddaramaiah will take charge as the new Chief Minister of Karnataka on Saturday. Following the party's stunning victory in the recently concluded polls, both the former CM and state party chief DK Shivakumar emerged as contenders for the top post. The duo had travelled to Delhi for meetings with Party chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday.
The newly appointed Karnataka Chief Minister is slated to take oath on Saturday, May 20.
The former chief minister had been camping in the national capital since Monday. The two leaders discussed various issues related to Karnataka government formation in a meeting lasting over an hour. Siddaramaiah had then travelled to party general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal's residence for another meeting.
All you need to know about Chief Minister Siddaramaiah:
- He is a nine-term MLA who won the Varuna constituency by a margin of 46,163 votes last week.
- Siddaramaiah represented the Chamundeshwari constituency in Mysuru in the Karnataka assembly five times - in 1983 as an Independent, in 1985 on a Janata Party ticket, in 1994 and 2004 for the Janata Dal, and in 2006 for the Congress by a lean margin of 257 votes.
- In 2018, Siddaramaiah left the Varuna seat to his son S Yathindra and contested from Chamundeshwari and Badami. While he lost in Chamundeshwari to JD(S) candidate GT Deve Gowda, he defeated the BJP's B Sriramulu by slender a margin of 1,996 votes in Badami.
- In the run-up to the 2023 elections, the veteran leader had asserted that this would be his last poll. “I will retire from electoral politics," he had said repeatedly.
- Siddaramaiah hails from the Kuruba community, the third largest caste in Karnataka, and has previously spearheaded the AHINDA (Kannada acronym for minorities, backward classes, and Dalits) conventions.
- A former state unit chief of the JD(S), he was sacked from the party and eventually joined the Congress with his followers in 2006.
