Bengaluru: Congress undecided on CM's face

Bengaluru : The new Karnataka Chief Minister and the cabinet will take oath on Thursday. The Gandhis and national Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge will attend the event. The Congress has sent invitations to all "like-minded" parties to attend the oath-taking event. The final contours of the Karnataka cabinet will take shape in a day or two, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The Congress Legislature Party (CLP) is expected to pass a resolution leaving it to the Congress national president to decide the Chief Minister pick. No final decision will be taken, but the views of all MLAs will be ascertained.

Shivakumar on Sunday hinted that he is in the chief ministerial race saying he took everyone along and never sought anything for himself. He also brushed aside speculations about differences between him and former chief minister Siddaramaiah.

Shivakumar said he had extended cooperation for him earlier and now Siddaramaiah would cooperate with him. On the question that those who toiled should also get preference instead of those who are liked by the people, Shivakumar said when Siddaramaiah and Dinesh Gundu Rao had resigned as the Congress Legislature Party president and head of the state unit respectively after the party's rout in 2019 by-elections, then Congress national president Sonia Gandhi had reposed faith in him and made him president. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which witnessed defeat in the Karnataka Assembly polls, failed to win even a single seat reserved for the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category.

Besides, the party also lost in 24 constituencies out of 36 reserved for the Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates.

Karnataka has 51 reserved constituencies, out of which 36 seats are reserved for SC candidates and 15 for candidates belonging to the ST community. The poor show of the saffron party in the reserved seats came despite the outgoing Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai's decision to increase reservation for the SC/ST community in the state. Out of 36 SC seats, Congress candidates won 21, while the BJP candidates emerged victorious in 12 seats. The assembly elections in Karnataka may be over, but a series of other state polls this year will keep the political pot boiling till the 2024 Lok Sabha battle.

At least three assembly elections could also take place alongside the Lok Sabha polls. After Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram would go for polls this year. The northeastern states of Nagaland, Tripura and Meghalaya were the first to have assembly polls in 2023. The last part of 2023 would witness a series of assembly polls with terms of legislative assemblies of Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana ending on different dates in December this year and January 2024.