G 24 Hours Digital Bureau: Finally, Siddaramaiah took oath as the Chief Minister of Karnataka. State Congress President DK Sivakumar took oath as Deputy Chief Minister. After four days of deadlock and speculation, the Congress on Thursday announced the names of Siddaramaiah as the Chief Minister of Karnataka and Sivakumar as the Deputy Chief Minister. Congress wins by a landslide defeating BJP in Karnataka. Congress won 135 seats in the 224-member assembly. BJP got 66 seats.
They took oath today, Saturday afternoon at Kantirva Stadium in Bangalore. Siddaramaiah took oath as the Chief Minister of the state for the first time in 2013 at the same stadium. Now he is becoming the Chief Minister of the state for the second time. MK Stalin, D Raja, Nitish Kumar, Mehbooba Mufti, Sharad Pawar, Farooq Abdullah and Kamal Haasan were present at the swearing-in ceremony as part of opposition parties’ show of unity against the BJP. Apart from the Chief Minister-Deputy Chief Minister, other members of the Cabinet will also take oath today.
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Siddaramaiah finally took the post of Chief Minister of Karnataka after putting an end to all the speculations. DK Sivakumar sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister of the state. The guest list invited for Siddaramaiah’s swearing-in ceremony is also surprising. Chief Ministers of foreign states, leaders of opposition parties are all present. Notably, several non-BJP heavyweight leaders were left out of the invitees.
Eleven top opposition leaders including Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, NCP leader Sharad Pawar have been invited. The Congress refrained from inviting some non-BJP Chief Ministers to the grand function. These include Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Telangana’s K Chandrasekhar Rao, Andhra Pradesh’s YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan, Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik.
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Because Telangana Chief Minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao since late 2022 is preparing to form a third front by uniting opposition parties to challenge the BJP and Congress in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. KCR’s BRS organized a massive rally in January this year. Several leaders including CPM’s Pinarayi Vijayan, AP’s Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann, SP’s Akhilesh Yadav, JDS’s HD Kumaraswamy were invited.
No Congress leader was invited. Although KCR’s political career started at the hands of the Congress. But since forming his own party in April 2001, he has stayed away from the grand old party. Like KCR’s BRS, Arvind Kejriwal’s UP and BJP-Congress emerged as alternatives to both parties. In Delhi, where the AAP government is in power, Kejriwal’s party is clashing with the Congress. In 2013, Kejriwal’s UP entered electoral politics by defeating the Sheila Dixit-led Congress in Delhi.
Nine years later, the same thing happened again in Punjab, when UP dominated Punjab to thwart the Congress’s bid to return to power in the state. When it comes to leaders like Jagan Reddy, Pinarayi Vijayan and Navid Patnaik regionally, the Congress either contests directly in their respective states or is seen silently supporting the BJP-led NDA government.
Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRCP, which defeated the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh in 2019, has previously backed the NDA government at the Center and Chief Minister Jagan Reddy is also considered close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress-led United Democratic Front directly contested the 2021 assembly elections in Kerala with the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front. And politics is clear about BJD chief Naveen Patnaik. The Chief Minister of Odisha recently announced that he will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha and Odisha Assembly elections alone and does not want an alliance with the Congress.