Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi invited to Siddaramaiah's birthday on Aug 3

Bengaluru: Former chief minister and opposition leader in the State Legislative Assembly S Siddaramaiah will turn 75 on 3 August. To celebrate the occasion, his followers and Congress party leaders in the State have decided to organise 'Siddaramothsava' at Davanagere. A delegation of the organisers of the event met Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in Delhi on Wednesday and invited him and his mother Sonia Gandhi to the celebrations. The birthday is also expected to see leaders from different political parties joining the Congress.

JDS Srinivas Gowda set a trend by joining the Congress in the presence Rahul Gandhi inthe Delhi AICC office on Wednesday. Two more JDS leaders Kotthur Manjunath and Dr MC Sudhakar also joined the party. According to the organisers, several Congress leaders will also join the celebrations on 3 August as a tribute to Siddaramiah, who is known to have led a very clean political life.

Political observers in the state look at this event as a show of strength of Siddaramiah in Davanagere where he has had only a little or no political activity so far. His home town is Mysuru and Badami is his Assembly constituency from where he won theelections in 2018. The organisers who are close political associates of Siddaramiah are determined to give him a place as their supreme leader.

This comes at a time when Siddaramiah is fighting a cold war with the KPCC president DK Shivakumar. The success of this event will have a great bearing on the rest of the political career of Siddaramiah and is likely to project him as pan Karnataka leader of the Congress.