The Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah is a forceful speaker, and is usually so without forsaking dignity or resorting to demagoguery. Yet, in his last 15 months in the post, those familiar with his style saw that a certain emphatic edge was missing in his speech. There could be many reasons for this mild dampening of his baritone. Having been groomed in a different political culture (he spent a larger part of his political life as a Lohia socialist and joined the Congress in 2006), it was clear that he was struggling to negotiate with the quirky ways of the Congress high command, and the many games of the party’s local veterans. The results of this year’s Lok Sabha elections, where the Congress won only 9 of the 28 seats in Karnataka did not help his cause. He was expected to deliver anywhere between 15 and 20 seats, and this was clear underperformance. He couldn’t duck the nationwide trend that ushered in a majority government led by Narendra Modi at the centre.
At this juncture, people inside the Congress, and a section of the media controlled by upper castes inimical to Siddaramaiah’s social justice agenda, started to say that he had lost his magical touch and that his government was clueless. “The government has not taken off. He was far more dynamic as a deputy chief minister,” was a refrain that floated around, referring to his time in the Janata Dal (Secular), where he served as second-in-command on two occasions.
Following the Lok Sabha results, there had been speculation about the vacant berths in the state’s cabinet, and whether the power to fill them lay with the chief minister. During Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh’s visits to the state, he entertained groups that demanded that G Parameshwara (the state Congress chief who had lost the assembly polls in 2013) be appointed deputy chief minister. The fact that Singh did not ask these dissenters and their promoters to desist from publicly demanding an alternate power centre was seen as an old Congress trick to check Siddaramaiah’s stride. But now, after the announcement of the by-poll results on 25 August, Siddaramaiah appears to have recovered his confidence. On 28 August, he spoke to the media at his home office, and assured them that he was the one who was vested with the authority to decide on expanding or reshuffling his cabinet. “If need be, I’ll consult the high command myself, there is no need to run emissaries between Bangalore and Delhi,” he said, expressing himself with a firmness that had been missing in recent months.
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