Siddu's 2.5-year stint ends in Nov; DKS CM's dream still at a distance

Perhaps the worst kept secret of Karnataka politics is that back in May 2023, the party state unit Chief DK Shivakumar accepted the Deputy Chief Minister's post only because he was promised a promotion in the second half of the term.

The Congress high command promised an initially implacable Shivakumar that he'd head the government for the latter two-and-a-half years. This came to be because the party's most popular leader Siddaramaiah won the support of some 100 of the 135 MLAs in the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting held on May 14, 2023.

While Shivakumar accepted this reality, he insisted in public that all 135 MLAs were elected under his leadership as the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president. He became Siddaramaiah's deputy provided he didn't share the post with anyone else.