DK Shivakumar, Congress warhorse and troubleshooter, has been finally made the president of the party’s Karnataka unit. After months of delay, Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi finally made his appointment to the position official. DK Shivakumar, popularly known as DKShi in the state, had been eyeing the coveted post for almost a decade and has now realised his dream.
He was expected to take charge after his release from Delhi’s Tihar Jail in an alleged money laundering case last October. But, the process got delayed for various reasons. According to party insiders, leader of the opposition and former chief minister Siddaramaiah, who sees DK as a threat, was not in favour of the decision, forcing Sonia Gandhi to delay it. After many state Congress leaders expressed anguish over the manner in which the party was ignoring “go-getters” like DKShi, a concerned high command announced his appointment on Tuesday.
Shivakumar now has the responsibility of rebuilding the party in the state, currently ruled by the BJP. His real strengths will now be put to the test.
Shivakumar is a man for all seasons for the Congress. He reached the top of state politics by fighting the Gowda family in their stronghold. His long battle with the Gowdas is legendary.
The Vokkaliga leader won his first assembly election in 1989 from Sathanur in Kanakapura taluk. When S Bangarappa became the CM in 1990, he recognised Shivakumar’s talent and made him a junior minister with the ‘prisons and home guards’ portfolio. Even though the portfolio was insignificant, DK caught the attention of the top brass because of his leadership skills and spunk. He was just 29 years old and that mattered a lot.
When the HD Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal came to power in 1994, Shivakumar was one of the very few who survived the storm. He fought a battle with the Gowdas even when Deve Gowda was the Prime Minister.
When a fellow Vokkaliga, SM Krishna, became the chief minister in 1999, he made Shivakumar his urban development minister. DK behaved like the de-facto CM, rubbing many top leaders the wrong way. In the 2002 Lok Sabha bypolls, he fought against Deve Gowda from Kanakapura and lost. He took his revenge by defeating Deve Gowda in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls from the same seat by fielding a journalist, Tejaswini Gowda, against him.
But the Krishna government lost the assembly polls held along with the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress and JD(S) formed a coalition government and Shivakumar was kept out. He had to wait till January 2014 to return to the Karnataka cabinet.
He had held the post of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) working president during the BS Yediyurappa government. But he was ineffective as the head of the party unit.
When the Siddaramaiah-led Congress came to power in 2013, Shivakumar was kept out on charges of corruption. But he did not quit the party or say anything against the high command. In January 2014, he was made the state power minister.
Even though he never shared a good rapport with Siddaramaiah, they stuck together because of their common enemy — the Gowdas. There was the occasional bickering, but they managed to work together.
When the BJP tried to defeat Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel in the Gujarat Rajya Sabha election in August 2017, the same Shivakumar sheltered party MLAs from the western state. He was raided by the income tax department and Enforcement Directorate, but he did not budge. Ahmed Patel won and Shivakumar had the last laugh.
The Karnataka leader is no stranger to this role. In 2002, the Congress-led Vilasrao Deshmukh government in Maharashtra was about to collapse. Fearing a defeat, he moved his MLAs to neighbouring Karnataka, ruled by SM Krishna.
Krishna entrusted the responsibility of keeping them safe to his young urban development minister Shivakumar. He herded them to Eagleton Resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru and hosted them for a week. On the day of the trust vote, DK escorted them back to Mumbai and the Vilasrao government survived. And Shivakumar hit the national headlines. That incident also helped him cement his relationship with the Gandhi family.
He missed the chance to become the KPCC president in May 2017 because Siddaramaiah saw him as a threat. But he did not utter a word against the party or Siddaramaiah. He was the campaign committee chairman during the previous election.
After the polls delivered a fractured mandate, the same Shivakumar joined hands with the Gowda family to keep the BJP out of power. He had kept them at the same Eagleton Resort for three days and later took them to Hyderabad by bus. He made sure that no Congress MLA switched sides and even brought two “missing” legislators — Pratap Gouda Patil and Anand Singh — back into the party.
Shivakumar is liked and hated in equal measure. He is a polarising personality but his supporters love and admire him because they say he stands by them during crises.
His rivals fear him because he is vindictive. He makes no bones about his ambition to be the chief minister of Karnataka before he retires from politics. Speaking to this reporter, he had said that he had won seven assembly elections in a row and had done a lot for the party which makes him eligible for the post. And most people agree with him.
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