Why the Congress is fighting the Karnataka battle without a CM face

The Congress has decided that it will not project a chief minister candidate until the elections in Karnataka are over.

Both Congress chief, D K Shivakumar and former chief minister, Siddaramaiah are front-runners to the post. However national Congress chief, Mallikarjuna Kharge has made it clear that the post of chief minister will be decided after the elections are over.

The Congress is expected to take the 2013 route, when it contested the elections without a CM face. In that year, the two contenders were Siddaramaiah and then Congress chief, Dr. G Parameshwar, who eventually lost the elections. The final call on the CM was taken after the elections and the man in charge was decided by the MLAs.

The Congress would not make the mistake it made in 2018, when it projected Siddaramaiah as the CM face. His rivals had joined other parties with the clear intention of defeating him. The gamble paid off for the rivals and the Congress fell short of a majority by 33 seats.

Even though the high command has decided not to announce a CM face, both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar have made the noises to indicate that they are in the running, if the Congress is voted to power. However this pitch has gone down considerably now, with both leaders only focusing on trying to win the elections. This is largely to do with the fact that Kharge stepped in and asked both leaders to only focus on winning, while adding that the CM would be decided later.

For Shivakumar the issue is a tricky one. He is appealing largely to the dominant Vokkaliga community. The community tends to vote for a leader if they find that he or she would become the CM of the state. This voting pattern was seen in the case of both S M Krishna and H D Deve Gowda, both of whom belong to the Vokkaliga community. Shivakumar is making a similar appeal to the voters of the community stating that if they vote for the Congress a Vokkaliga would become CM.

For Siddaramaiah the negatives are that he has several rivals within the party. The Congress would not want a repeat of the 2018 fiasco in which even Siddaramaiah ended up losing from his home turf of Chamundeshwari. On the other hand, for Shivakumar, the negatives are corruption and money laundering cases that are being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED).

However the issue of the CM's post in the Congress would not be as simple as a battle between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar. There is M B Patil from the Lingayat community, Satish Jarkiholi (ST), G Parameshwar (Dalit) and Zameer Ahmed Khan (Muslim) who have also thrown their hat into the ring.