Congress’s Siddaramaiah has been appointed as the Chief Minister of Karnataka.
Bengaluru:
Congress leader Siddaramaiah has been appointed as the Chief Minister of Karnataka, days after winning the assembly elections and ousting the BJP from power.
It took the Congress a few days to decide who would be the chief minister as both Siddaramaiah and Congress state chief DK Shivakumar had shown interest in the top post.
Siddaramaiah played a key role in bringing the Congress back to power in last week’s assembly elections.
He entered politics in 1978 when he was elected to the Mysore Taluka Board. He contested the 1983 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election on a Lok Dal party ticket and won from the Chamundeshwari constituency in Mysore.
Siddaramaiah later joined the Janata Party and retained the Chamundeshwari seat in 1985. He won on a Janata Dal ticket in 1994 and again in 2004 on a Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S) ticket.
In 2005, he was suspended from JD(S). A year later, he joined the Congress along with his followers. He won the Chamundeshwari by-election in 2007. Mr. Siddaramaiah served as the Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka twice.
Siddaramaiah comes from the Kuruba community. He holds a bachelor’s degree in science from the University of Mysore. He practiced law before entering politics.
The scale of the Congress victory in Karnataka is a record in more than 30 years, both in terms of seats and vote share. The party won 135 seats – 55 more than in 2018 – with a vote share of 42.88 per cent. The Congress came closest to this score in 1999 when it won 132 seats and a vote share of 40.84 per cent. In 1989, it won 178 seats with a vote share of 43.76 percent.
The BJP won only 66 seats, down from 104 in the 2018 state election. It did not win a single seat reserved for the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category. Karnataka has 51 reserved constituencies, of which 36 are for Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates and 15 for ST candidates.